[thelist] it's intellectual, but is it property? (was RE: GNU / GPL)

[Joel D Canfield]

> "The term carries a bias that is not hard to see: it suggests thinking
> about copyright, patents and trademarks by analogy with 
> property rights
> for physical objects. ... These laws are in fact not much 
> like physical property law[.]"

Yeah, I can agree with that, to an extent. There's a reason the physical
stuff is usuall referred to as 'real property' (and some of it as 'real
estate' - think for a minute about what 'estate' means) which is that
there are other kinds of 'property' than that which is 'real', or
physical, tangible.

Interesting stuff, in any case.

joel