-----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 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP Desktop 9.0.6 (Build 6060) iQA/AwUBRzsXd8PxH8jf3ohaEQKhQgCfcD2ipkn5XLwTqQM9AuPSqJ+ttLwAn0Vo a5/SsHjTJYvAj0dqJRDN+SwK =DatZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'