Comment by randallsquared

Property rights themselves are a codification of a belief about nature, from a natural law perspective. There are other conceptions of property, of course, but of the ones that are relatively common, I think the least useful is the one that views property as whatever government says property is. Most people--well, most USians--think property has (and rights have) a meaning more fundamental than whatever the State arbitrarily grants. We note that animals defend scarce territory, that toddlers are upset when something they have is taken from them, that we distinguish jealousy regarding something we have and want to keep versus covetousness of something another has and we want to obtain.

Obviously the idea of copyright and patent as property rights didn't spring fully formed in the 1970s, but the entertainment and software industries during the 1970s and 1980s really drove the idea that copyright infringement is exactly the same thing as theft of something that someone actually has. The idea of copyright and patent in most law, including the US Constitution, are held as special, limited-term grants, not property rights.