You, brian j. callahan, wrote:

>Tresy writes:
>>>Don asks:
>>>>Did Bill Gates build Microsoft without using the overarching coercive
>>>>power of the state?
>>>
>>>Well, for a start, there's  copyright law.
>
>>Which Apple correctly says Gates flouted.
>
>And which the State decided, with the help of Microsoft's legion of lawyers,
>he did not.
Proving my point, which is that the "coercive power of the state" is not
equally distributed, which is where the unfairness arises, not in the
"coercion" itself. How many people/businesses would invest time and money
in creating something if anyone could come along later and rip it off? I
don't see anything coercive about intellectual property laws per se.