Regular readers of this blog will know that I am not a fan of the term “intellectual property”, and that I prefer the more technically correct term “intellectual monopolies”. Despite that, I strongly recommend a new book from someone who not only approves of the term “intellectual property”, but of its fundamental ideas.

Mike Masnick writes an article about the issues of the term "Intellectual Property". This article is part of his series on Intellectual Property http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080228/003450379.shtml .

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Simon Phipps speaks against intellectual property; software patents suffer in the US

" It has become fashionable to toss copyright, patents, and trademarks—three separate and different entities involving three separate and different sets of laws—into one pot and call it “intellectual property”. The distorting and confusing term did not arise by accident. Companies that gain from the confusion promoted it.

Jon Healey correctly points out that the debate over intellectual-property theft is complex because we are often dealing with "non-real properties." These properties cost nearly nothing to produce, and an infinite number of people can use the same property at the same time. And yet, we still want to treat them as if they were "real" property.

The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) wants countries such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam to be placed on the US government's blacklist of copyright sinners for supporting open source software

For readers of Linux Journal, "IP" almost certainly refers to the Internet Protocol, part of the TCP/IP suite that underpins the Internet. But to most people, if it means anything, "IP" refers to something known as "intellectual property". This widespread recognition is rather curious, because "intellectual property" does not exist.

Pretending that ownership of software is possible and thus trying to enforce this ownership (as copyright and patent laws do) actually leads us to violations of actual physical property.