Confession: I
loathe the term "Intellectual Property". Whenever I encounter it my vision momentarily blanks in a haze of red and white, and all I can hear is a droning chant of "kill the infidels." (Perhaps I should speak to someone about that.)
I'm not opposed to any of the broad concepts it represents -- copyright, patent, and trademark -- so much as I dislike lumping them together, when they're not remotely the same thing. They have different purposes. Copyrights encourage art. Patents encourage research. Trademarks protect consumers.
Furthermore, the concept deliberately uses the term "property" to evoke the legal principles that apply to physical objects, when in reality none of the bodies of jurisprudence involved has any relationship to property law. This is a problem -- you can see at once, when you think about it, that these words are being used in a way that is designed to obscure and muddle their meaning.
There are a wide variety of terms that you can use instead to indicate a body of work, such as an anime series. One may say
franchise, or reach into specificity with
series. You could indulge in metonymy and use the term
license. You may well use a convenient shorthand and call it a
property, although this usage makes me uncomfortable. You might opt for a translation from the Japanese and call it a
work. You've got alternatives, may as well use them, is what I'm saying.
Plus, the acronym's already taken. Internet Protocol, people. Buy the ticket, take the ride.
[For a much better-written rant on the problems with the "Intellectual Property" umbrella, see RMS' discussion of the concept, from which I have liberally borrowed.]
words from chris, 2009-04-18 03:11:29, los angeles
