[humanrebar]

In this case, intellectual property "rights" are not natural rights because they are neither essential for a free society nor essential to the survival of an individual. My objection is exactly that intellectual property rights do not quack like natural rights and that legal terminology (and eventually laws themselves) should respect that.

Referring back to the U.S. Constitution, a limited monopoly was granted "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". No one would argue that those aren't noble goals, but one wouldn't be oppressed if his patents and copyrights were violated.

If one's home or savings were stolen or unfairly confiscated on the other hand...

If you want to talk programming, it is a design bug to label patent monopolies as "intellectual property rights" because the "property rights" abstraction does not fit the idea of limited monopoly powers. Because, among other reasons, violations of "property rights" have side effects of a different kind and magnitude than a failure to respect monopoly privileges.

[SEMW]

To be clear, I wasn't making any comment on whether IP rights are 'natural rights' or not, only on whether they're property rights (which ISTM is a much more concrete question). Apologies if I wasn't clear about that. (On the main point, see my reply to your other post).