I wouldn't be so quick to consider the anti-IP position as one of simple rationalization. I once held your position, and now consider it to have been a narrow-m

I wouldn't be so quick to consider the anti-IP position as one of simple rationalization. I once held your position, and now consider it to have been a narrow-minded mistake (that was directed at my past self, not you). Give me a moment to explain my philosophical transformation by way of example: Suppose you walk out into some unclaimed forest and gather some wood. Per John Locke, you have mixed your labor (gathering) with a natural resource (wood) and now own the gathered wood. And what is ownership? Ownership is the right to do with your property whatever you'd like, provided what you do does not affect or threaten the property of others (including the property they have in their own persons). This is understood intuitively in the scope of the example here that it would be wrong for someone to, by force and against your will, take the wood that you gathered. To continue the example: your friend Bob approaches you and shows you an invention of his - a wooden seat, exquisitely crafted and very comfortable to sit upon. It's a fantastic idea, and you're really quite taken with it. Instead of purchasing the seat, however, you decide to produce some of your own, using the wood you own, for your own use and to sell to others. You do so. Bob comes to you, quite upset. You've stolen his idea, he says, and profited with it against his will. And here the internal conflict introduced by the concept of "intellectual" property is highlighted. You used your own property as you pleased and in a way that did not harm or threaten to harm anyone else's property, and yet according to Bob, you've violated his "intellectual" property rights. In fact, the only way to not violate Bob's "intellectual" property is to not do with your property as you please, even though that use is entirely nonviolent. Bob's exercise of his "intellectual" property right is a violation of your property right! I hope I have sufficiently demonstrated here that IP cannot be a right at all, because it destroys the internal consistency of property rights in general. The response to this is usually utilitarian: "But how are artists going to get paid without IP?" I offer a riposte here not because I have to (the ends do not justify the means) but because some people need firm ground to stand upon before they can move into a brave new world sans copyright. The threshold pledge system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_pledge_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_pledge_system) is a means of providing compensation to artists for their work that does not depend upon IP law.