Elaborating on Crosbie's comment: I also saw the Helprin op-ed this morning, courtesy of Bill Zame who sent me the link. Helprin confuses a gift granted him by the government with that which he earned by the sweat of his brow. A house you build with the sweat of your brow. Helprin's great masterpieces such as Memoir From Antproof Case he also built with the sweat of his brow. Suppose for the sake of argument that I had purchased a copy (for obvious reasons I have not). Then what right does Helprin have to tell me how I can use my copy? If he built a house and sold it to me, would that give him the right to tell me how to use it? Make no mistake, intellectual property is not about property, it is about monopoly. What Helprin wants is not the right to own his work in perpetuity - that right he already has. What Helprin wants it the right to monopolize his work in perpetuity - and that is a gift given him by the government that is not given to builders of houses, flour mills, travel agencies or newspapers.

Mark: nobody is forcing you to sell your great masterpieces. But if you sell them, stop trying to tell us what to do with our copies of them.

Thanks, David. I want to remember these kinds of arguments when people insist on conflating real and "intellectual" property. On the one hand, people want to say that there is no difference between the two, but on the other, when it suits them, they want to treat the two very differently.

Well, I'm happy to continue demonstrating how intellectual property is indeed real property, albeit intangible.

The egregious conflation occurs when people suggest that the transferable monopoly is the property and not simply the intellectual work, and that consequently the work in all its instances remains a singularly ownable property - as if, although the knowledge inherent in the work may not be owned, its representation can be. An iconodule's charter.

There are privileges concerning one's IP that may be bought and sold, but these are not the IP itself - although they are sometimes (erroneously) referred to as intellectual property, when they should be termed 'transferable privileges granted by laws concerning intellectual works such as patent and copyright'.

• The intellectual works you purchase or create are your private intellectual property.
• Copies or derivatives of your private IP that you make on your private premises are also your private IP - irrespective of their authorship (which being an inviolate truth, remains unaffected by copying or derivation).
• If you transfer any of your private IP to another (through sale say), then it becomes someone else's private IP - no longer your IP.
• If you create an intellectual work, whether inspired by nature or the work of other artists, and however much its provenance involves direct or indirect copying of anyone else's published work, then it becomes published when you first transfer it to another without restriction upon its further distribution or reproduction.

That's intellectual property, and it behaves like any other.

Some king or other then grants the transferable privileges of copyright and patent to restrict what people can do with their intellectual property. And then everyone understandably gets confused as to what's intellectual property and what's a transferable privilege. The confusion is compounded because we've lived so long with copyright it's difficult to separate the privileges it grants from the IP it applies to.

IP, good - IP law (copyright & patent), bad.

Natural monopoly, good - state created monopolies, bad.

Four legs good, two legs bad!