> Plumbing supplies and other tangible personal property, real
> property,
> and fixtures are not the same as intellectual property.
Why not? That's what the creator's rights group argue when it suits their political and rhetorical purpose.
I think the ownership of copyright should lie with the person (including persons moral) who provided the impetus for creating the work. In most cases, that's the author, but a memo, with a natural author, written on business time, on business equipment, distributed to business people, for business purposes, should be owned, in the copyright sense, by the business, not by the Director of Paperclips and Pencils who wrote it.
> But that
> takes us far, far afield. Suffice to say for now, perhaps, that
> if
> there were in fact intellectual property in the plumbing
Not "intellectual property". Just plain old-fashioned property. The plumber should have rights to his plumbing; the abstraction of the plumbing, the plumbing job; the plumber should be compensated ad infinitum for the labour and skill exercised in that plumbing work. Won't someone think of the plumbers!!!??!??!?
> owned the plumbing. I may own a book written by Tolkien, but I
> don't own the copyright in it.
Exactly. Tolkien did while he was alive. Similarly, the homeowner should own the physical plumbing, but the plumber should be repeatedly compensated for the skill and exercise inherent in the work, the act, the deed of plumbing. Plumbers' Rights Are Human Rights! We need international plumbing protection. And electrical. And masonry. Received on Sat Mar 19 2005 - 02:05:15 GMT
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