Intellectual property is a slippery subject
Related to my previous post is the nebulous concept of “intellectual property”. I was a presumed producer of “intellectual property” for years but I never realized that I was supposed to lay claim to it and patent it or copyright it or somehow “own” it. Being just a naïve academic, I thought knowledge was something to be shared, something that belonged to everybody. So I just published and hoped that what I discovered was useful to other people.
Nowadays knowledge has gotten all mixed up with ideas of property and an interesting article by Cory Doctorow on the subject of intellectual property is at the Guardian. I think it’s worth a read. Doctorow ends his article:
If we’re going to achieve a lasting peace in the knowledge wars, it’s time to set property aside, time to start recognising that knowledge - valuable, precious, expensive knowledge - isn’t owned. Can’t be owned. The state should regulate our relative interests in the ephemeral realm of thought, but that regulation must be about knowledge, not a clumsy remake of the property system.
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