[astraloverflow]

Personally I find the term "intellectual property" to be more messed up. It isn't property, it's a government granted monopoly on reproduction and distribution.

Calling it property allows for this bizarre concept of a form of "theft" that still leaves you with the thing "stolen" from you.

[int_19h]

Property on anything beyond that which you're immediately using or occupying is a monopoly granted by social convention (from which laws are then derived). As Jefferson said,

"It is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all... It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society."

So in that sense I don't think it's an altogether misleading analogy, although of course the ability to copy without taking makes it very different from tangible property. But both are ultimately social conventions, and both exist supposedly for the common good. If that common good cannot be demonstrated, and even moreso if there's demonstrable harm, the conventions can change.

[tablespoon]

> Personally I find the term "intellectual property" to be more messed up. It isn't property, it's a government granted monopoly...

So, in other words, it's property.

There's nothing that guarantees a particular lump of atoms are "yours" besides a government-granted monopoly to control that lump. The atoms don't care.

[barnabee]

The atoms don’t care but if someone else takes them, you don’t have them anymore.

That is a different class of concept than so-called “intellectual property”.

[vel0city]

Real estate isn't property it's just a government granted monopoly.

You don't own a car, you have a title that gives you a government granted monopoly over that hunk of metal.

You don't really "own" most things without society agreeing you do.