> But fundamentally, intellectual property is a form of property that includes intangible things. I think the idea of code (or information in general) being in

> But fundamentally, intellectual property is a form of property that includes intangible things. I think the idea of code (or information in general) being intangible has some problems. Point me to information which exists without being encoded in physical phenomena. All information we've ever encountered exists in the form of specific configurations of matter and energy, and is therefore tangible, just as a house or a car is. It is just barely tangible, since there are many more physical configurations which can reasonably encode information than there are physical configurations corresponding to a usable car. The term scarcity as usually applied to information is also somewhat problematic because it is not applied consistently between "physical" goods and information. Yes, the fact is that information is easy to copy because it is easily encodeable in a wider range of physical configurations. But we cannot reasonably ignore the effort required to produce it if we want to make a fair comparison. The quality we are interested in is how hard it is to obtain, to have something in the first place, not just whether it is easy to copy. Code is easy to copy, but is hard to produce, and hence I would argue it is still a scarce resource in this sense. > My use of a physical good inherently inhibits your use. Not if you first make your own copy of the physical good, the same way you do with information. You said it yourself: you can use your copy of the software without inhibiting someone's simultaneous use. It's just that information has the boon and burden of being easily copyable once you've initially obtained it.