-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 9:20 AM +0000 11/14/07, Darren Rhodes wrote:
From ... http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2007/11/metaphors-and-moral-panics.html
At 8:21 AM -0500 11/14/07, Roy M. Silvernail wrote:
I'd say it's only property if you can control who else touches it.
Bingo.
In the case of "intellectual" property, which is, for the most part, merely
software(1), Hettinga's First "Law" Of Property applies: if its encrypted
and I control the key, it's my property.
The point is, if it's not encrypted, floating around in the clear,
publicly, on an increasingly ubiquitous geodesic internetwork, it is,
physically, *anybody's* property, no matter how many laws they pass to say
it ain't so. No legislation is going to prevent someone from using it.
Note that invoking "profitability" is a circular argument here, as all use
is, by definition, profitable: that is, an increase in marginal utility,
whoever's numeraire you chose to measure it with.
(1) Using Nobel Laureate Gary Becker's(?) definition of "software" as
information which can be copied, "hardware" being atoms of various kinds,
and "wetware" being operating the stuff between your ears, actual neurons
firing in real-time: expertise, opinion, talent, knowledge, wisdom, etc.,
whatever you want to call it...
Cheers,
RAH
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R. A. Hettinga