🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1992Oct27.054925.2441@udel.edu> berryh@huey.udel.edu (John
Berryhill, Ph.D.) writes:

>I have a piece of paper that says I own my house and a certain
>amount of land around it.  There is nothing about the house or the land
>around it that you would perceive as being intrinsically identified
>with myself in any way.  How is my ownership and the rights of ownership
>that I enjoy in my house and land any more tangible than any other form
>of property?

The house and land exists in a single location, and your ownership (if
we agree that you own it -- a different issue) is over that single
location.  The fact that you own the house and land does in itself give
you any right over another house on some other land.  When you try to
claim and exert the latter right, *then* you have opened the Pandora's
box known as "intellectual property".

"Intellectual property" is the concept of giving somebody who owns
something called A equivalent ownership over something else called B,
just because B looks or acts like A.  It is a very, very dangerous
concept.  If it were applied universally, it would be illegal to use
fire, or the wheel, or the lever, without paying a royalty to
somebody.  Thank heavens it's applied only in narrow cases.  But the
cases are getting less and less narrow every day, and it frightens me.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <dhesi@cirrus.com>
also: dhesi@rahul.net