Intellectual Property: hands off, it’s mine, all mine!

Matthew Yglesius grabs a note by Tim Lee on how off-the-shelf software should be treated under copyright law, harkening back to the unsuccessful effort a century ago by Bobbs-Merrill to control re-distribution of its books by claiming that, based on a printed blurb not available before purchase, the purchaser of the book was "licensed" to read it. Yglesius makes the following point:

“It's really impressive that IP owners have done such a good job of obscuring the basic point of intellectual property law. Impressive as a PR achievement, but also extremely unfortunate. It is, however, an important point. The nation's IP regime is supposed to serve the public interest, not the business models of today's IP-creating companies.”

I would say not the least of the cleverness was the coining and relentless spread of the very term “intellectual property.” It has tended to place copyright and patent on the same footing as your sacred home and all your other private property made safe from trespass; this was a raw meat formulation for influential libertarians of the publishing and technology industries to downplay the good of society as the basis for copyright and patent laws in the Constitution. You know, this clause was supposed to allow Congress to establish a short-term monopoly to encourage innovation and all that. Nowadays, especially in copyright, short-term is not exactly that.