The Feudal Lord Analogy (RE: Response to Mr. Maturana)

[Richard Stallman]

I appeal to everyone in this discussion to resist and reject the use
of the propaganda term "intellectual property" to label the topic now
under discussion.  It is more clear, and less biased, to describe the
topic as "copyright and patents".

The term "intellectual property" encourages simplistic
overgeneralization: lumping together copyrights, patents, and various
other things too.  It also encourages a specific idea of what is
important about them--that they are something that could be bought or
sold--with all the details, the ways they restrict other people's
activities, treated as secondary.

See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html for more
explanation.

A discussion that uses the term "intellectual property" is likely to
embody that bias as a premise.  I don't have time to study the long
messages in this thread, but simply to ask whether copyright is
"effective" enough suggests that that bias is present.  The useful
response in such a situation is to bring the bias out in the open and
then criticize it.  To respond to the details of the arguments erected
on that foundation is a side track.

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