You, DDeBar, wrote:

>OK, maybe it is a good idea to get a definition of terms. If so-called IP
>is not properly called property, what would be a correct term?
My property professor had a succinct defintion: "property" is the "legal
relation between two people with respect to a thing." It's an interesting
way of looking at the subject, because most people fetishize "property"
has the thing itself. But that obscures what's really going on, which is
the adjudication of rights between individuals.

In this case, why on earth should anyone else have co-equal rights to the
product of a person's creative work? I thought that under socialism, the
worker no longer had the surplus value of his labor expropriated by the
capitalist, yet when we get down to cases, the first thing the
self-described socialists on this list want to do is deprive the person
who comes up with a socially beneficial idea of the fruit of his
labor--and not just the surplus value, but the whole magillah! What am I
missing here?

_____________
Tresy Kilbourne
Seattle WA