Editor’s Pick. Written by Foo Quuxman.
Much has been said about the problems of intellectual property here and elsewhere which I won’t go into today, however there is one implication of IP that I have not noticed in any of the writings of the anti-IP thinkers
Property is defined as the exclusive right to possess and control a given object or resource, which some argue logically extends to property in ideas. However if person B comes into possession of person A’s idea (the method is irrelevant) then person A no longer has exclusive possession or control of the idea, or rather the Platonic ideal of the idea.
The usual method of dealing with this problem is for the state to forbid person B from using the idea in any way, or in any way that can produce profit (profiteering would be extra evil you know). This would effectively require person B to lie to himself, to pretend that he does not know something which he does know, and to constantly audit his own thoughts for secondhand ideas before he can legitimately act upon ideas of his own.
But that is just a kludge over the real problem. Let us now “peel the lid off Hell” and look deeper.
