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Neither Intellectual Nor Property
Techdirt's Mike Masnick is writing a series of short articles on topics around intellectual property. His latest focuses on the term itself, exploring the nomenclature people have proposed to describe matter that is neither intellectual nor property. The whole series (starting here) is well worth a read.
So if you happen to simultaneously invent something with someone who beats you to the patent office by 20 minutes, you're happy paying him for his intellectual property that you clearly stole (telepathically)?
-- Alastair
IANAL (I don't even play one on TV), but it seems to me that IP might be considered a legal fiction, much like the equally disputed concept of corporate personhood. Maybe our resident NYCL could set me straight on this.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
Even if it is a nickel, it would solve so many problems. If it is worth so much to protect then there should be no problem in paying tax to cover for the mess it makes.
But binary executable, mp3 file, a movie file and all the other things that are copyrighted are ultimately just a sequence of numbers. You can theoretically copy them by remembering all those numbers if you have a phenomenal memory and ability to type quickly.
Coding etudes
What about medicine? What about food? What about all the things that we'll never be able to shape with just a printer? You can't just "print out" a bunch of solid steel girders and snap them together into a workable shelter or office building. Why do people think this is a feasible future for us?
Because it is. Suffice to say, I'm an engineer and you're obviously not. Everyday physical stuff is made of atoms. Manipulable atoms. You "just" need to put a bunch of atoms in the right configuration. It's not currently easy, but it's getting easier every day, and requires no magic new physics, it is just an engineering problem.
(This is why replicators are basically believable in star trek but transporter "beams", at least ones not requiring both source and destination to have equipment, i.e. as used in the plots, are not).