I get your organization supports strict copyright laws and DRM because it faciliates innovative business models and allows IP holders to get paid. I fail to understand why you don't also support ownership of other IP concepts like language, numbers and music notes.

Imagine the possiblities for individual ownership of letters, words, and musical notes! People would have to pay to the owner of the letter "e" whenever they wrote the word "the" or that they couldn't use the C note in a sound recording without their permission.

But unfortunately, pirates would wonton steal this IP and the owners would be so much poorer. We need government help to foster new business models.

To get around this "market failure" we would need strong DRM that prevented pirates from using letters, numbers, words, and notes as their own without paying up. Only, then can the owners be secure in the knowledge their efforts have be rewarded.

***I fail to understand why you don't also support ownership of other IP concepts like language, numbers and music notes.***

Uhhh, those are not "IP concepts," and they don't fall in the class of protectable subject matter.

I gather Brian, that your post is not serious, so I'm not going to reply further.

Noel, I think there's a point behind Brian's sarcasm. Patrick's point seems to be that an expansion of "protectable subject matter" leads to increased production and quality of that subject matter. So, to take another example, a copyright-like database protection law such as the EU Database Directive ought to lead to more and better databases being generated in Europe, as compared to the US which has no such protection.

In other words, is Patrick saying that all expansions of IP-like rights leads to better incentives to create, or only that stronger enforcement of existing copyright laws does so?

Incidentally, I agree with Patrick that referring to copyrighted works as "content" suggests that a song or movie is a fungible commodity. Unfortunately, the small number of companies producing most of our commercial music and video entertainment treat the artists' work as exactly that.

John,

I do not believe I was calling for an expansion of protectable subject matter, unless you are referring to developing nations that do not protect the work of their native creators to the extent we do. In some cases there the expansion would be from zero, so that would be welcomed by local creators.

As for database protection, I have never been comfortable with efforts to introduce that here in the US, despite my recognition that much work is involved in some databases; I once worked for a company that saw much of its revenue wiped out due to outside copying of a database that took a dozen people a year to assemble. I think there are ways to encourage such efforts short of expanding copyright law to the extent that facts could find themselves copyrighted. That is a dangerous place.

The post by Brian made little sense because I was talking about encouraging creation. You cannot create a new note; they are merely sound frequencies. It makes no sense to claim copyright over a note you did not create, such as Middle C. You likewise cannot claim copyright over a letter you did not create (although Bert from Sesame Street might have wanted to copyright his favorite letter, "W") but you could create a new letter and claim trademark on it; I suspect that is what Prince did with that odd symbol he likes to use.

And yes, at times the distributors of creative works may not seem to appreciate just how special those works are as far as their creativity is concerned. But that does not mean we should dilute what protections exist for those creators.

Let me use this opportunity to chime in and say, yes, your advocacy is not only cogent and forceful, it's VERY appreciated. Hopping onto this site from all the droning, illogical anti-IP chatter on the Web is like getting a big, deep breath of clean air.

On another administrative note: I see there's another commenter who posts as "Tom," a handle I've used here. Given that The Other Tom and I are on opposite sides of this issue, I'll start using the full Tomas. Hopefully my existing "Tom" comments -- including a couple in a post that appears above this one on the main page -- have not caused confusion.