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Appiah, like almost everyone nowadays, takes the concept of "intellectual property" to be valid and meaningful description of a coherent thing, and disputes whe
by hirundo 5y ago
Appiah, like almost everyone nowadays, takes the concept of "intellectual property" to be valid and meaningful description of a coherent thing, and disputes whether it is a good thing or a bad one. I argue that it fails to refer to any coherent thing; that it is an misleading overgeneralization about unrelated laws, so we should reject the concept entirely.
This is a fair gist of Stallman's overall message. It is attractive as a consumer of intelligence but frightening as a producer of it.
- leephillips 5y agoIn his linked writings, it becomes clear that he’s not necessarily rejecting copyright, patents, and trademarks, but instead pointing out that generalizing these three things under the term “IP” distorts their legal meanings and histories. (He might reject aspects of these three things elsewhere, but that’s a different issue.)