Re: automatic copyright protection or IP rights granted by "the public"?

JQ Johnson <jqj[_at_]darkwing.uoregon.edu> wrote in part:
>
> "Property" in English has several meanings apart from ownership, but
> the confusion over the word gives lots of opportunity to expand the
> notion of ownership. Any thespians among us? Would you claim that a
> play automatically owns all the "properties" (today, more familiarly
> "props")?
 

I'm a theatre professional, and among my many jobs over the years (including actor--only amateurs run around calling themselves thespians) I have been a prop master. I would not claim that a play owns anything; that is a misuse of the English language. Properties used in theatre are necessary adjuncts of the production at hand. I don't think comments about additional meanings of the word "property" add anything constructive to this discussion. It's quite clear that the only meaning we are concerned with here is that of "a thing that is owned."

> As a practical matter it's of course plausible to analyze current
> practice in the U.S. in terms of "ownership" of IP, but if you do
> so you should be aware that you're biased your conclusions in one
> particular direction.

To discuss Intellectual Property in terms of ownership is the only sensible course to take. It has nothing to do with bias; it has to do with a clear understanding of the only applicable meaning (in the US, at least) of "property" in the context of "intellectual property." Nobody on cni-copyright is likely to understand "property" to mean "an attribute or quality belonging to" rather than "a thing which is owned," without a specific reference to make the alternate meaning clear; moreover, "belonging to" refers also to ownership, so to divorce the word "property" from the concept of "ownership" is essentially a non-starter.

> Rather than conceptualizing it as a generic "property" right (even
> though that's our common misuse of language), we might better
> conceptualize it as a bundle of specific but limited rights granted
> to the author by the federal government.

As someone else has made clear, it is the people of the United States who make the grant. The government secures the rights, the people give them--to themselves. I agree that it is not a generic property right; it is a specific set of property rights, appropriate to intellectual property as distinct from other kinds of property.

As for "our common misuse of language," please speak for yourself. I prefer not to be lumped in with people who use "conceptualize" when they mean "think of," "conceive of," or "imagine."

Amy Stoller

ghoti
<redherring[_at_]tuna.net>
<:)))>><( Received on Tue Sep 15 1998 - 16:20:17 GMT