“I feel there’s a chasm, a conceptual chasm, between the view of IP as a property right, which is recognised as such by UK, European and global law – it’s yours, you own it, you can trade off it – versus the other conception of copyright as a regulation, something that trips consumers up, and therefore the less of it there is the better,"
Then there are arseholes like this (http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/05/rockstar/all/1)
"Called the Rockstar Consortium, the 32-person outfit has a single-minded mission: It examines successful products, like routers and smartphones, and it tries to find proof that these products infringe on a portfolio of over 4,000 technology patents once owned by one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies."
Or this (http://www.petapixel.com/2011/11/15/luma-loop-camera-strap-killed-off-after-patent-awarded-to-black-rapid/)
IP isn't just something to trade with, it's a weapon to be used against competitors when they infringe, frequently unwittingly because the process is so fracking obvious it should never have been patented, or there's prior art that invalidates the patent; but it's too expensive to defend yourself in court.
IP needs to be cut back to what it was originally created to be: a temporary, limited, government granted monopoly to allow creators and artists, if they are clever enough, to get financial rewards from their work. IP's fetishisation into a God-given/basic human right of absolute control which should be extended to the heat death of the universe will only harm creators and the public alike.