Bill on intellectual property:
But this analogy overlooks the crucial difference between material objects and information: information can be copied and shared almost effortlessly, while material objects can't be. Basing your thinking on this analogy is tantamount to ignoring that difference.
This is not the analogy the term "intellectual property" primarily refers to. The effortlessness to share it (two guys pickpocketing will have no problems to share the money they stole) or even, in some cases, to copy it (imagine a bio tec enterprise developing a new yoghurt bacterium which is stolen from their laboratories and then reproduced by the thieves) is not restricted to immaterial objects. "Intellectual property" rather is a term designed to protect the efforts of the producer who decides to devote them not to produce material objects but to create immaterial innovations. This is why patent laws exist; without them you wouldn't get most of the economy working, and many great inventions would have never seen the sunlight, as I mentioned some mails ago. "Intellectual property" is an important progress in culture since it helps assigning value to non-material goods. Who of us does not personally profit? And, as I also mentioned earlier, everyone who commits himself to cite other people's ideas rather than to pretend they're his thereby accepts the concept of intellectual property. You have to enter a completely different discourse, namely a capitalism vs. socialism discourse, to address the issue whether or not intellectual property should be assigned a price, or if it should be all public domain. My personal position is a very pragmatic. Intellectual property needs the lowest possible protection which suffices to assure its provision. This means a high level of protection (i.e. high price if you want to utilize other's intellectual property) is required e.g. in the pharmaca sector where they have to go through years of expensive development and testing to make a substance a secure benefit for everyone, and it can be for free with only the citation requirement in academics where the income of the producers of intellectual property is provided differently. Music is somewhere in between, as argued earlier. Best, Fritz ############################################## Fritz Feger mail@fritzfeger.de www.fritzfeger.de Fon: 0177 - 6424 020 Fax: 0721 - 151 435 058 Rüttenscheider Str. 253 Eulenstraße 56 45131 Essen 22765 Hamburg 0201 - 455 4555 040 - 3980 4766 ##############################################