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A Survey of the State of IP
An anonymous reader writes "This week's Economist has a number of stories in its survey of the state of IP (link to lead article), written from a balanced, business-oriented perspective. If you do not have a web subscription it is worth picking up a newsstand edition, if only to read a defense of open source from being seen as a 'flaky, radical, pinko strategy not related to the competitive marketplace'." From the article: "In recent years intellectual property has received a lot more attention because ideas and innovations have become the most important resource, replacing land, energy and raw materials. As much as three-quarters of the value of publicly traded companies in America comes from intangible assets, up from around 40% in the early 1980s."
I think you hit the nail on the head here. They want to create artificial limits on supply and demand of information and discoveries while there is actually plenty of natural limits in supply and demand of things like oil, metals, and natural resources. I'm sorry, but property rights aren't about artificial scarcity for the sake of incentive, but about allocating scarce resources effectively and justly which in itself leads to incentives.
From the title i thought this was the state of IPv4 ... oh how i was disappointed