> science is owned by the community rather than any individual person the problem is that the community is a group of many individual persons, ultimately it is

> science is owned by the community rather than any individual person the problem is that the community is a group of many individual persons, ultimately it is the individual persons who by actively knowing the 'science' embody science itself. the science is not exclusive to any individual or group (though nowadays, "important" science is really restricted because nobody wants the Chinese copying from them). As I see it, the gist of the whole issue is establishing property rights over pieces of culture. Why would anybody do this? well it seems to me that the biggest driver is that if things are exclusively owned, then they can be traded in some kind of marketplace. The problem with this attitude is that culture (e.g. science) is not something that can be exclusively owned (a problem shared by digital things). IMO, it all comes down to people wanting to be paid (with royalties and/or recognition) for what they did a long time ago. with a practical intent, I think that the question which needs an answer is how can we have a marketplace to trade things which are not exclusively owned? or maybe we should reconsider the general practice of continuing to reward people for things they already did?