[Upd-discuss] Did You Say "Intellectual Property"? It's aSeductive Mirage by Richard M. Stallman

[Tim Hubbard]

At 8:55 am -0500 24/2/05, Richard Stallman wrote:
>     I agree the term is not perfect, and possibly even misleading for
>     certain things, but I don't know what else to call it.
>
>If you really want to speak of copyrights, patents, trademarks,
>perhaps trade secrets or perhaps not, and miscellaneous other laws,
>all as if they were a single thing you could call "it", then you would
>need either the term "intellectual property" or one of the various
>replacements people have suggested (such as "intellectual
>monopolies").
>
>However, once you shrug off the influence of the term "intellectual
>property", you will find that you rarely want to speak of this "it".
>These laws are very different and have a little general aspect in
>common.  The term "intellectual property" focuses attention on the
>common aspect and away from the specifics.  The use of that term is
>the main reason why anyone would think of trying to lump copyright,
>patents, trademarks and other things together.  Once you stop using
>"it", the question of how to speak about "it" won't come up much.

I'm with Richard on this one.  You may use IP as a collective term, 
but the word 'property' associates in peoples minds these industrial 
regulations with the idea of ownership.  I like to quote 'Originality 
is undetected plagiarism' - a bit extreme perhaps, but once you 
invoke the idea of ownership people forget that ideas are built on 
ideas.  The fact that this term has been adopted so strongly smells 
like social engineering to condition us to believe that ideas should 
be ownable.

Tim
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Dr Tim Hubbard                      email: th@sanger.ac.uk
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