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

[Richard Stallman]

    And I would say that both uses are legitimate and deserving of protection.

The US legal tradition used to be that artificial monopolies were
meant to serve a public interest.  Therefore, questions of when to
create them and how far they should extend were to be judged in terms
of benefits and costs for the public.

If we were looking at this question in terms of the public interest,
we would ask: is there a public interest in encouraging companies to
develop logos and names that more successfully manipulate us?  Is
there a public interest in encouraging advertising that builds up the
recognition of these symbols?  Do we, the public, want to go out of
our way to encourage such things?  I'm confident most Americans will
say no.

But when you pose the perverse question of whether these uses are
"deserving of protection", you set aside the American legal tradition
and the question of what benefits the public, and implicitly advocate
imposing these monopolies on the public for the sake of the
monopolist, regardless of what they do to the public.  You place the
possessor of the artificial monopoly above the public interest.

This is exactly the point of view that the term "intellectual
property" is designed to promote.  The term has two problems: bias,
and overgeneralization.  Here we see the bias.

You're entitled to your opinions, but they appear to be diametrically
opposed to the basic purpose of the Union for the Public Domain.