ref: 23e9d829bc041a41f244f8c559f373206439dabd
dir: /tpl/economics/intellectual_property.md/
The 'intellectual property' oxymoron ==================================== "*If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.*" -— Thomas Jefferson Copyright --------- Copyright infringement is not stealing, and copyright law is against the free market, it is a government sponsored monopoly. Copyright law is routinely abused to suppress free speech and individual freedoms, it is abused by recording companies to exploit artists, it is abused by governments to control information. Copyright law is not only evil, it is also stupid, and should be ignored by anyone that believes in a free society and free markets. Bach, Shakespeare and Michelangelo didn't need copyright, we don't need copyright. Copyright infringement is a victim-less crime, nobody has a right to have a monopoly on ideas or information, you have a right to keep your ideas and information private, but if you make them public, they are not your private property anymore.