Comment by zugi
9 hours ago
Stallman tried to introduce the term "intellectual monopoly", which fits better, since they really are monopolies granted by the government for limited periods of time, intended to promote progress in science and the useful arts.
"Property" was chosen specifically as a bait and switch. It tries to get people to take a concept that has been understood for thousands of years for physical objects, and apply it to this novel century-or-two long experiment for encouraging the production of easily-copyable things.
> since they really are monopolies granted by the government
This is property.
There are multiple usages of the word.
One of them refers to tangible things, was first codified more than 5000 years ago, and is almost entirely uncontroversial.
The other was popular in 1700's France re: their system of privileges, and the people found it so onerous that they embarked on a campaign of executing nobility until it seemed like the concept was good and dead.
We can use the word however we like, it's just a word, but if we conduct ourselves as if they're the same sort of thing, which France was doing at that time, we're in for the same sort of pain.
So what I'm saying is that its a bad idea for us to let data be property.
> One of them refers to tangible things, was first codified more than 5000 years ago, and is almost entirely uncontroversial
Which definition are you referring to?
Debts, wholly intangible legal fictions, have been treated as property for thousands of years.
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All, or at least most property rights are monopoly rights anyway. I have a monopoly right over my house, and my car, my bank balance. That's just what ownership means.
Those rights are very flimsy actually. The government can seize your house, your car, and your money anytime. Hardly a monopoly when a third party can break it at will.
By that standard, nobody has any right to anything. I think it's pretty widely understood that rights range from aspirational descriptions of a just world to widely accepted legal consensus.
That the state which grants you your right can take them away doesn't make them flimsy.
And it's certainly more than "hardly" a monopoly. If the government gives a certain company right to operate on train track infrastructure but denies the same to every other company, then does that first company hardly have a monopoly?
Sure. That’s how rights work. It’s why we need to keep on fighting for them when necessary.