Intellectual property is arbitrary relative to, say, a hammer. Everyone agrees on what a hammer is, and that it is a "contested resource." The term "Intellectu

Intellectual property is arbitrary relative to, say, a hammer. Everyone agrees on what a hammer is, and that it is a "contested resource." The term "Intellectual Property" is very recent and we are still trying to reach an agreement on what it means. "Stealing a portion of an owner's exclusive copyrights," isn't generally the message being sent when someone talks about "stealing music" or "stealing software." I agree the dictionary is not the right place to look, however I disagree that legal lexicons are much more helpful. I think the issue here is the general metaphor used by regular people to communicate these ideas with each other.