It absolutely is the definition of rent-seeking. That doesn't make it bad. If I wrote a book, government grants me a limited monopoly on production of that boo

It absolutely is the definition of rent-seeking. That doesn't make it bad. If I wrote a book, government grants me a limited monopoly on production of that book, and I can collect rent (in an economic sense) from anyone who wants to reproduce that book. That's a good thing. A difference comes in that with land, the underlying resource is limited. With books, it isn't. We're both collecting rents, but on something different. That difference translates into why it's helpful to incentivize writing books, but not helpful to incentivize consolidation of land among a few landlords. Over time, the two converge, though. If copyright still applied to works from 1500, it would be crippling to society. People couldn't build from a collective intellectual commons, since it'd all be locked up. The people who collected rents on those works would have less incentive to work, not more, despite having no relation to their creation. Whoever owned the rights to the work of de Vinci would have tremendous income based on no contribution to society. It would create a new feudalism or nobility. That's why the copyright and patent clause in the US Constitution guarantees copyrights and patents only for a limited term. Rent-collecting on Mickey Mouse works incentivized Walt Disney to create Mickey. That was a obviously a good thing. Rent-collecting on Mickey Mouse now a century later isn't incentivizing anything except for extra profits to a megacorp, and limiting others' ability to build off of Walt's work. That's obviously a bad thing. If you build a SaaS, and you collect rent from it, more power to you. If your grandchildren's grandchildren don't need to work because they're still collecting rent, we've messed something up. TL;DR: rent seeking != parasitic. Both are distinct economic concepts.