The "intellectual property" misnomer

[Anton Vredegoor]

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at comcast.net> wrote:

>> -- there may be no patents, but with the statement they assert that
>> either there are no patents or they hold them.
>
>The PSF doesn't know of any patents associated with Python.  It's possible
>that the PSF will apply for some, though, and I like using "intellectual
>property" because it covers (in the common understanding) all stuff of this
>nature.

It's probably better to "think outside the box" and stop using the
term altogether. After reading this:

http://old.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/anarchism.html

I get the feeling that many of the things said in there are true, but
still the conclusion to fight the law using the law as per the GPL
must be wrong.

For example:

http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

suggests that the legal system does little for creators of music and
is mainly used to protect the interest of the music companies.

Probably nothing good can come from using it. I am not saying that it
cannot be used to prevent something bad, but that it's probably better
to try to do something good ...

Another problem with the IP term is that it feels like a "contradictio
in terminis". It is very hard (impossible even ?) to delineate ones
own contribution to a piece of software because if an idea has any
quality it almost always depends on the ideas of a lot of other
people. Therefore ideas are very unlikely to be "undivided" property,
unless the intellectual level is very low.

Anton

--

If I have seen farther than others, it is only because I was standing
on the shoulders of giants