I see you havent actually implemented real SOX compliance yet. You see, sudo ain't good enough. No solution that allows actual root privilige escalation is good enough. You need complete separation of duties with immutable audit trails and unchangable logs. Technically you'll have to use something like Etrust, selinux, secure solaris, etc. The kinds of solutions that tend to royally mess up your applications and make your job a three person job. One who grants you priviliges, one with the privilige to execute the command on the machines, and one who watches what commands were executed. None of which may be allowed to have access to the functions of the other persons.
Sox has nothing to do with good security policies. If you think it has, you have not implemented it right.
Of course they did. Today not even our various governments would be stupid enough to plan an expensive digital TV switchover, which will just get killed off by internet delivery in a few years.
"I don't see what these folks are arguing about... unless their argument is that they don't know how to compete with beaurocratic government drones."
It's the same motivation behind everything from this to copyright and patent extensions. Many private enterprises are not interested in competing anymore. It's not very profitable and it's a lot more hard work than getting your very own exception to free market rules.
Expect further attempts to kill any competition with legislative means as we exit the age of scarcity and prices should be dropping like rocks all over the board, not just in a few spots.
"Knowing funamentals of somethings has more benefit than having specific technical knowledge."
Indeed. Most computer usage classes I've seen usually teaches specific apps or OS's, which is completely worthless as they're bound to be obsolete and forgotten anyway once the kids enter the workforce.
Now, stick them with every sort of computer and every type of word processor throughout their education, forcing them to learn the fundamentals of how things work, rather than any specific configuration of the week and they might retain some useful skill.
Re:Weren't they aware of this during implementatio
on
VLC & European Patents
·
· Score: 1
Oh, dont worry, the USPTO allows you to patent something even when it is patented. LZW has been patented by both Unisys and IBM.
It's so heartwarming to see the level of competence displayed by shaved apes these days.
Re:Weren't they aware of this during implementatio
on
VLC & European Patents
·
· Score: 1
As only patent attorneys are capable of determining wether or not a specific program might or might not infringe on a patent you will never be helped by reading them, nor can you be 'willfully ignorant' by not reading them as you're not qualified to judge your infringement anyway. The only possible outcome of non-lawyers reading patents is that the patent holder can claim you knowingly took their idea straight out of the patent database.
"It is not generally accepted practice in the business world to build without awareness of what was done previously."
Mmm, you havent been doing much software development, have you?
"Patent searches cost in the thousands to tens of thousands of dolllars, litigation costs are in the millions, losing a product line could be hundreds of millions."
Good. Now multiply those thousands of dollars with those thousands of procedures in an application. In fact, to be reasonably safe you'd need an entirely new form of programming, Extreme Legal Programming, where you have a team of two programmers working with a team of two lawyers who'll vet every step the programmers take.
Try that and I'll bet you'll never even get your product to market, not even if you could spend every dollar Microsoft has in the bank, because you couldnt crank out more than a line or two of code per day. But of course you'd be safe from any patent litigation. There's so little profit in suing bankrupt companies anyway.
"You didn't write the song, make the move, etc. If you want to own the content, create it or pay someone to create."
Nobody owns the actual song. Someone may own the copyright to the song, but that is just ownership of temporary government sponsored monopolistic rights, not ownership of the song itself. Further, there is plenty of precedence stating that when you buy a copy of a song or other work protected by copyright you own that copy of the work in question. That is the first sale doctrine, and generally it's been upheld that if someone claims they're selling something to you they _are_ in fact selling something to you, no matter how they wish to later claim licensing or rental. Your rights to do what you wish with your property may however be curtailed by someones copyright, but you are still the owner of that property.
"So your proposal is to stop allowing people to profit from their creations?"
There's a difference between allowing people to profit from their creations and allowing derived monopolies to expand indefinitely, thus severely damaging the free market. Copyright is meant to compensate the creator of a work, not huge inefficient corporations with whatever expenses they can generate. And it's becoming woefully obvious that the intellectual monopolies are our economies version of the Soviet factories. Only when you have a monopoly can you let your expenses grow to hundreds or thousands of times what the actual production cost is.
Patents and copyright need to be drastically revised to compensate _only_ the actual creative work.
Of course, as far as the big companies are concerned they'd rather have their employees in slave labour camps in Asia, prevent any competition through intellectual monopolies and their consumers buying products for money that appears through magic (or credit).
Cheap unfree labour, intellectual 'property' and credit is this centuries golden triangle and a previously unsurpassed way to transfer wealth from the population to the new small ruling class. It may even beat taxes for efficiency.
For companies it's always profitable to minimise wages, minimise competition and maximise price. That does not mean it's necessarily a good thing for society as a whole, or even the companies themselves in the long term.
One would think so, but apparently not, or we wouldnt see the ability to engage in monopoly pricing. Music appears to be unique products, and not varying brandnames of the same product.
So in the end it doesnt matter if I can buy music by someone else or buy a book instead or listen to the birdsong. When the only option is to not buy a product and there is no ability for any other producer to compete with cheaper products you have a monopoly and there is no free market. And that's why music costs so much and is so expensive to produce.
Monopoly: exclusive control of a particular market that is marked by the power to control prices and exclude competition and that esp. is developed willfully rather than as the result of superior products or skill. - Merriam-Webster Dictionary of Law
Power to control prices and exclude competition, indeed. Or are you suggesting the labels cant set prices as they wish because they could get undercut by competition, or that there is someplace I can purchase legal alternate brands of various artists?
Cars are interchangeable, therefore there is competition, which brings down prices. Burgers are interchangeable, therefore there is competition, which brings down prices. Compare the costs of producing a car with the features it has with the consumer cost and then compare the costs of producing a music album with the consumer cost.
Wonder how the price of music can rise and rise and rise, while the costs of producing music get lower and lower and lower and the supply of composers and artists is virtually endless and the number of customers reachable have risen all the time?
Say goodbye to the free market and hello to monopoly control.
"if you were suddenly given control over a multi-million dollar project and a huge paycheck, I don't think we'd be having this discussion."
Yes, well, if I were given monopoly control over oxygen I dont think we'd be having this conversation either. You could go to my competition which would provide neon or argon, but somehow I think you'd find my product the one you really did want. But hey, I'd provide it at cost. I just happen to have really high costs.
"So you are saying that you don't feel the need to pay for a business' expenses?"
I'm saying that copyright was intended to promote creativity. It was never intended to promote labels expenses.
I'm perfectly willing to pay for business expenses if they're accrued in a free market in competition with others, which will result in the most efficient production of the product I'm interested in.
I'm perfectly willing to accept the monopoly tradeoff of copyright if all incentive is given to the artist.
But I'm _not_ willing to accept monopoly pricing in a buisness where the tradeoff isnt creativity but a whole lot of other things.
Personally I get pretty much all my music after getting recommendations from friends or buying them at concerts or clubs. A networked 'people-who-liked-this-also-liked' system would be ideal and cost virtually nothing. And I dont think I've watched a video in five years.
"But with sentiment like yours, the bands will never get the attention or rewards that they deserve."
Um, marketing is in itself a distortion of the marketplace. It's very purpose is to ensure that some bands get more attention than they deserve and as there are limited channel resources, others get less, which is, perhaps, the most damaging aspect of the current industry. It leads to cultural impoverishment as the breadth of music is sacrificed in the interest of maximum exposure marketing for a few manufactured cash cows.
As long as the current system remains in place, it prevents those bands you're talking about from getting attention and rewards as they'll never have the resources to compete with the limitless pockets of large corporations financed by legalized monopolies of the lowest common denominator.
"It's not about my recording of the song, it's about my song."
It's not 'your' song. The various copies are always property of the person who bought them. You just have the legal right to prevent them from doing what they wish with their property.
"Which is why, when it comes down to it, copyright, even when abused, can't be too much of a problem."
Yes, you'd think that. The you make a quick calculation of what it costs to make a recording, how many sales are made and at what price and realize the markup is hundreds or thousands of times. Thats the kind of run amok cost growth and markup that only a completely distorted free market can result in. So, apparently the scope for abuse is not so small.
You can still choose where and when you play your recording of the song. You just cant prevent anyone else from playing their recording of it where and when they want.
"Copyright is about protecting choices"
It's not about protecting anything, it's about limiting peoples rights to do what they wish with their creativity, memory, abilities and property for a time in the interest of generating wealth for the wielder of the intellectual monopoly for the purpose of encouraging them to create more.
It's a tradeoff, not a specific right to property. Everyone else are the ones that lose their rights so that more creators of art or science will be compensated and so hopefully encouraged. However, as the compensation has shifted from the creators to the legal constructs holding the title to the monopolies there is no encouragement and thus the tradeoff is destabilized, becoming, to a large extent, nothing more than the legal ability of some corporations to exact monopoly pricing from the public in exchange for nothing.
"Why is is to friggin' hard to just pay for music?"
It isnt. However, I dont want to pay for the marketing, the videos, the lawyers, the exec payscale, the parties, the execs coke habit, the payola, the execs cousins nephews marketing, videos, birthday party and coke habit and the execs cousins newphews floozies new wardrobe.
How can a music company refuse to release a finished recorded album from an artist selling platium on the grounds that it wont make a profit? How can it fail to make a profit? Where is the hard work and what is the honest buck? Pretty much anyone who can afford a car can afford to pay for a complete professional recording, and could make a profit from a few thousand sales at todays prices. How exactly does copyright benefit the artist and public in such a case?
I'd love to just pay for the music. But it appears that choice usually aint on the menu. Paying for everything _but_ the music appears to be the dish of the day. But that's monopolies for you.
If I have a loaf of bread and you take it I've lost that loaf of bread and I cant eat it anymore.
If I sing a song and you sing it too I've lost nothing and I can still sing my song.
Physical property exists and has value and use and can be lost with or without the law. Intellectual property exists solely as a construct of the law; without the explicit right to forbid you to sing my song I have not lost anything. The value is entirely derived from my ability to prevent you from exercising your rights.
Of course, these laws pretty much mean that the downtown bar that's sewing your mouth shut as you leave to prevent you from drinking elsewhere can now sue anyone selling straws because they let you drink through your nose.
It makes sense until you realize that the OSS crowds install even more sorts of programs and make even more adjustments to their computers, yet manage to get patches in a timely manner.
Which means that either Microsoft is terminally unable to create stable and clean APIs so everything affects everything else, causing an inordinate amount of breakage, or they're still not very serious about the patching thing.
You know, that sure will make the process short with those free speech laws in the US. There's all sorts of things that are criminal to say in all sorts of countries.
Expect the extradition requests to start arriving by the boatload.
"Intellectual Property is the widespread popular name. Live with it. Complaining about it is petty."
Intellectual property is the propaganda term used to create the foundation for saying that 'taking our intellectual property is theft'. Saying 'violating our monopoly rights is theft' would not be quite as striking, would it, nor even make sense.
The fact that it is widely used only highlights the importance of countering those effect before the actual difference between property and intellectual monopolies is forgotten.
I know very well that you werent the one starting off with the gravely defective example; however you went on and complained about anyone using 'IP' getting a lecture. So, yes, you get a lecture too, however, you shouldnt feel like the primary target of the lecture; it's there to clarify the subject for anyone who might need some clarification on why the usage of 'intellectual property' is an attempt to muddle their thinking.
And do note that I dont disagree that IP is a real term, used in the real world, by real people, with real interest in perpetuating and even extending a really defective system that no longer serves its real purpose.
"Similarly I don't think public awareness would work with IP."
Apparently, the RIAA and MPAA disagree.
However, public awareness is not the same as political awareness. Making politicians more aware of the issues is the goal. Preventing the current 'oh, property protection is good, lets flag these laws through' trend and reinstating the balance where we're talking about a serious interference in the free market, granting actual state-supported monopolies on ideas and rather reminiscient of the implementation of certain far-left ideologies.
Imagine the screams when the FSF and others turn patent laws on end in the same way as they've done with copyright. A few key patents here and there, and they can start sending cease and desist letters to any software company that doesnt release everything they own under the GPL. The instinctual support of freedom of thought has probably prevented that this far, but I suspect that that may eventually end.
Then we really can start talking about borg-like viral licenses.
"There's no value in complaining about the name."
As the name itself holds value as a propaganda tool, there is value in opposing the use of the name and changing the name. And as long as there is value in that, you'll find yourself getting a lecture any time you use the concept in a dubious manner.
"What isn't needed is the inevitable lecture whenever anybody uses "intellectual property" in a sentence"
Apparently, that inevitable lecture actually is needed to counter the propaganda carpet bombing performed by the so-called IP industries. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that what would actually be needed would be a legal requirement for warning labels on any 'intellectual property', explaining the differences and what the foundation of the laws are, and how those laws are supposed to benefit the public.
The 'IP' concept is both ambigous and misnamed. Temporary Intellectual Monopoly, would be more valid, as it is not, in fact, property, but temporary state sanctioned monopolies of certain rights. The 'IP' misnomer is simply a propaganda frame intended to shift the attention away from the fact that we're actually taking away rights from everyone else rather than protecting someones right to their 'property'.
Slashdot Mirror
I see you havent actually implemented real SOX compliance yet. You see, sudo ain't good enough. No solution that allows actual root privilige escalation is good enough. You need complete separation of duties with immutable audit trails and unchangable logs. Technically you'll have to use something like Etrust, selinux, secure solaris, etc. The kinds of solutions that tend to royally mess up your applications and make your job a three person job. One who grants you priviliges, one with the privilige to execute the command on the machines, and one who watches what commands were executed. None of which may be allowed to have access to the functions of the other persons.
Sox has nothing to do with good security policies. If you think it has, you have not implemented it right.
"They planned this out TEN years ago?"
Of course they did. Today not even our various governments would be stupid enough to plan an expensive digital TV switchover, which will just get killed off by internet delivery in a few years.
"I don't see what these folks are arguing about... unless their argument is that they don't know how to compete with beaurocratic government drones."
It's the same motivation behind everything from this to copyright and patent extensions. Many private enterprises are not interested in competing anymore. It's not very profitable and it's a lot more hard work than getting your very own exception to free market rules.
Expect further attempts to kill any competition with legislative means as we exit the age of scarcity and prices should be dropping like rocks all over the board, not just in a few spots.
"Knowing funamentals of somethings has more benefit than having specific technical knowledge."
Indeed. Most computer usage classes I've seen usually teaches specific apps or OS's, which is completely worthless as they're bound to be obsolete and forgotten anyway once the kids enter the workforce.
Now, stick them with every sort of computer and every type of word processor throughout their education, forcing them to learn the fundamentals of how things work, rather than any specific configuration of the week and they might retain some useful skill.
Oh, dont worry, the USPTO allows you to patent something even when it is patented. LZW has been patented by both Unisys and IBM.
It's so heartwarming to see the level of competence displayed by shaved apes these days.
As only patent attorneys are capable of determining wether or not a specific program might or might not infringe on a patent you will never be helped by reading them, nor can you be 'willfully ignorant' by not reading them as you're not qualified to judge your infringement anyway. The only possible outcome of non-lawyers reading patents is that the patent holder can claim you knowingly took their idea straight out of the patent database.
"It is not generally accepted practice in the business world to build without awareness of what was done previously."
Mmm, you havent been doing much software development, have you?
"Patent searches cost in the thousands to tens of thousands of dolllars, litigation costs are in the millions, losing a product line could be hundreds of millions."
Good. Now multiply those thousands of dollars with those thousands of procedures in an application. In fact, to be reasonably safe you'd need an entirely new form of programming, Extreme Legal Programming, where you have a team of two programmers working with a team of two lawyers who'll vet every step the programmers take.
Try that and I'll bet you'll never even get your product to market, not even if you could spend every dollar Microsoft has in the bank, because you couldnt crank out more than a line or two of code per day. But of course you'd be safe from any patent litigation. There's so little profit in suing bankrupt companies anyway.
"You didn't write the song, make the move, etc. If you want to own the content, create it or pay someone to create."
Nobody owns the actual song. Someone may own the copyright to the song, but that is just ownership of temporary government sponsored monopolistic rights, not ownership of the song itself. Further, there is plenty of precedence stating that when you buy a copy of a song or other work protected by copyright you own that copy of the work in question. That is the first sale doctrine, and generally it's been upheld that if someone claims they're selling something to you they _are_ in fact selling something to you, no matter how they wish to later claim licensing or rental. Your rights to do what you wish with your property may however be curtailed by someones copyright, but you are still the owner of that property.
"So your proposal is to stop allowing people to profit from their creations?"
There's a difference between allowing people to profit from their creations and allowing derived monopolies to expand indefinitely, thus severely damaging the free market. Copyright is meant to compensate the creator of a work, not huge inefficient corporations with whatever expenses they can generate. And it's becoming woefully obvious that the intellectual monopolies are our economies version of the Soviet factories. Only when you have a monopoly can you let your expenses grow to hundreds or thousands of times what the actual production cost is.
Patents and copyright need to be drastically revised to compensate _only_ the actual creative work.
Of course, as far as the big companies are concerned they'd rather have their employees in slave labour camps in Asia, prevent any competition through intellectual monopolies and their consumers buying products for money that appears through magic (or credit).
Cheap unfree labour, intellectual 'property' and credit is this centuries golden triangle and a previously unsurpassed way to transfer wealth from the population to the new small ruling class. It may even beat taxes for efficiency.
For companies it's always profitable to minimise wages, minimise competition and maximise price. That does not mean it's necessarily a good thing for society as a whole, or even the companies themselves in the long term.
One would think so, but apparently not, or we wouldnt see the ability to engage in monopoly pricing. Music appears to be unique products, and not varying brandnames of the same product.
So in the end it doesnt matter if I can buy music by someone else or buy a book instead or listen to the birdsong. When the only option is to not buy a product and there is no ability for any other producer to compete with cheaper products you have a monopoly and there is no free market. And that's why music costs so much and is so expensive to produce.
Monopoly: exclusive control of a particular market that is marked by the power to control prices and exclude competition and that esp. is developed willfully rather than as the result of superior products or skill. - Merriam-Webster Dictionary of Law
Power to control prices and exclude competition, indeed. Or are you suggesting the labels cant set prices as they wish because they could get undercut by competition, or that there is someplace I can purchase legal alternate brands of various artists?
Cars are interchangeable, therefore there is competition, which brings down prices. Burgers are interchangeable, therefore there is competition, which brings down prices. Compare the costs of producing a car with the features it has with the consumer cost and then compare the costs of producing a music album with the consumer cost.
Wonder how the price of music can rise and rise and rise, while the costs of producing music get lower and lower and lower and the supply of composers and artists is virtually endless and the number of customers reachable have risen all the time?
Say goodbye to the free market and hello to monopoly control.
"if you were suddenly given control over a multi-million dollar project and a huge paycheck, I don't think we'd be having this discussion."
Yes, well, if I were given monopoly control over oxygen I dont think we'd be having this conversation either. You could go to my competition which would provide neon or argon, but somehow I think you'd find my product the one you really did want. But hey, I'd provide it at cost. I just happen to have really high costs.
"So you are saying that you don't feel the need to pay for a business' expenses?"
I'm saying that copyright was intended to promote creativity. It was never intended to promote labels expenses.
I'm perfectly willing to pay for business expenses if they're accrued in a free market in competition with others, which will result in the most efficient production of the product I'm interested in.
I'm perfectly willing to accept the monopoly tradeoff of copyright if all incentive is given to the artist.
But I'm _not_ willing to accept monopoly pricing in a buisness where the tradeoff isnt creativity but a whole lot of other things.
Personally I get pretty much all my music after getting recommendations from friends or buying them at concerts or clubs. A networked 'people-who-liked-this-also-liked' system would be ideal and cost virtually nothing. And I dont think I've watched a video in five years.
"But with sentiment like yours, the bands will never get the attention or rewards that they deserve."
Um, marketing is in itself a distortion of the marketplace. It's very purpose is to ensure that some bands get more attention than they deserve and as there are limited channel resources, others get less, which is, perhaps, the most damaging aspect of the current industry. It leads to cultural impoverishment as the breadth of music is sacrificed in the interest of maximum exposure marketing for a few manufactured cash cows.
As long as the current system remains in place, it prevents those bands you're talking about from getting attention and rewards as they'll never have the resources to compete with the limitless pockets of large corporations financed by legalized monopolies of the lowest common denominator.
"It's not about my recording of the song, it's about my song."
It's not 'your' song. The various copies are always property of the person who bought them. You just have the legal right to prevent them from doing what they wish with their property.
"Which is why, when it comes down to it, copyright, even when abused, can't be too much of a problem."
Yes, you'd think that. The you make a quick calculation of what it costs to make a recording, how many sales are made and at what price and realize the markup is hundreds or thousands of times. Thats the kind of run amok cost growth and markup that only a completely distorted free market can result in. So, apparently the scope for abuse is not so small.
You can still choose where and when you play your recording of the song. You just cant prevent anyone else from playing their recording of it where and when they want.
"Copyright is about protecting choices"
It's not about protecting anything, it's about limiting peoples rights to do what they wish with their creativity, memory, abilities and property for a time in the interest of generating wealth for the wielder of the intellectual monopoly for the purpose of encouraging them to create more.
It's a tradeoff, not a specific right to property. Everyone else are the ones that lose their rights so that more creators of art or science will be compensated and so hopefully encouraged. However, as the compensation has shifted from the creators to the legal constructs holding the title to the monopolies there is no encouragement and thus the tradeoff is destabilized, becoming, to a large extent, nothing more than the legal ability of some corporations to exact monopoly pricing from the public in exchange for nothing.
"Why is is to friggin' hard to just pay for music?"
It isnt. However, I dont want to pay for the marketing, the videos, the lawyers, the exec payscale, the parties, the execs coke habit, the payola, the execs cousins nephews marketing, videos, birthday party and coke habit and the execs cousins newphews floozies new wardrobe.
How can a music company refuse to release a finished recorded album from an artist selling platium on the grounds that it wont make a profit? How can it fail to make a profit? Where is the hard work and what is the honest buck? Pretty much anyone who can afford a car can afford to pay for a complete professional recording, and could make a profit from a few thousand sales at todays prices. How exactly does copyright benefit the artist and public in such a case?
I'd love to just pay for the music. But it appears that choice usually aint on the menu. Paying for everything _but_ the music appears to be the dish of the day. But that's monopolies for you.
There is a vast difference.
If I have a loaf of bread and you take it I've lost that loaf of bread and I cant eat it anymore.
If I sing a song and you sing it too I've lost nothing and I can still sing my song.
Physical property exists and has value and use and can be lost with or without the law. Intellectual property exists solely as a construct of the law; without the explicit right to forbid you to sing my song I have not lost anything. The value is entirely derived from my ability to prevent you from exercising your rights.
Of course, any buisness model that cant somehow make a profit without having a state protected monopoly maybe doesnt deserve to make a profit?
"just like a sales pitch for Solaris."
Yes, well, the difference between a sales pitch for Solaris and a rabid flame is sometimes hard to tell.
But of course, it's been that way for as long as I can recall, so if you're used to it it wont sound that out of place.
Of course, these laws pretty much mean that the downtown bar that's sewing your mouth shut as you leave to prevent you from drinking elsewhere can now sue anyone selling straws because they let you drink through your nose.
It isnt ignorance of the law, it's ignorance of the patent. And it isnt a defense, it's avoiding possible willful infringement damages.
> IAAL
Yeah, well, when even lawyers have trouble understanding the ins and outs of patent law, maybe it's time to do something serious about it, eh?
"It does make sense"
It makes sense until you realize that the OSS crowds install even more sorts of programs and make even more adjustments to their computers, yet manage to get patches in a timely manner.
Which means that either Microsoft is terminally unable to create stable and clean APIs so everything affects everything else, causing an inordinate amount of breakage, or they're still not very serious about the patching thing.
You know, that sure will make the process short with those free speech laws in the US. There's all sorts of things that are criminal to say in all sorts of countries.
Expect the extradition requests to start arriving by the boatload.
"Intellectual Property is the widespread popular name. Live with it. Complaining about it is petty."
Intellectual property is the propaganda term used to create the foundation for saying that 'taking our intellectual property is theft'. Saying 'violating our monopoly rights is theft' would not be quite as striking, would it, nor even make sense.
The fact that it is widely used only highlights the importance of countering those effect before the actual difference between property and intellectual monopolies is forgotten.
I know very well that you werent the one starting off with the gravely defective example; however you went on and complained about anyone using 'IP' getting a lecture. So, yes, you get a lecture too, however, you shouldnt feel like the primary target of the lecture; it's there to clarify the subject for anyone who might need some clarification on why the usage of 'intellectual property' is an attempt to muddle their thinking.
And do note that I dont disagree that IP is a real term, used in the real world, by real people, with real interest in perpetuating and even extending a really defective system that no longer serves its real purpose.
"Similarly I don't think public awareness would work with IP."
Apparently, the RIAA and MPAA disagree.
However, public awareness is not the same as political awareness. Making politicians more aware of the issues is the goal. Preventing the current 'oh, property protection is good, lets flag these laws through' trend and reinstating the balance where we're talking about a serious interference in the free market, granting actual state-supported monopolies on ideas and rather reminiscient of the implementation of certain far-left ideologies.
Imagine the screams when the FSF and others turn patent laws on end in the same way as they've done with copyright. A few key patents here and there, and they can start sending cease and desist letters to any software company that doesnt release everything they own under the GPL. The instinctual support of freedom of thought has probably prevented that this far, but I suspect that that may eventually end.
Then we really can start talking about borg-like viral licenses.
"There's no value in complaining about the name."
As the name itself holds value as a propaganda tool, there is value in opposing the use of the name and changing the name. And as long as there is value in that, you'll find yourself getting a lecture any time you use the concept in a dubious manner.
"What isn't needed is the inevitable lecture whenever anybody uses "intellectual property" in a sentence"
Apparently, that inevitable lecture actually is needed to counter the propaganda carpet bombing performed by the so-called IP industries. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that what would actually be needed would be a legal requirement for warning labels on any 'intellectual property', explaining the differences and what the foundation of the laws are, and how those laws are supposed to benefit the public.
The 'IP' concept is both ambigous and misnamed. Temporary Intellectual Monopoly, would be more valid, as it is not, in fact, property, but temporary state sanctioned monopolies of certain rights. The 'IP' misnomer is simply a propaganda frame intended to shift the attention away from the fact that we're actually taking away rights from everyone else rather than protecting someones right to their 'property'.