Poll: Is the very concept of intellectual property outmoded?

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Is the very concept of intellectual property outmoded?
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108 votes tallied
No. There will always be proprietary information and the need to protect it.
33% (36 votes)
Yes.
56% (60 votes)
Not yet, but someday.
11% (12 votes)

Is the very concept of intellectual property outmoded?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Law
Intellectual property
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Colin Dodd
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Colin Dodd is a writer at Red Hat.
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3 Comments

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Kartik Subbarao | October 17, 2011
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For me personally, I find that the better that I can let go of my possessiveness to my own intellectual property, the less barriers that I end up constructing in my own mind, the more genuinely I can receive feedback about my work, and the more that I can be open to transformative ideas in any form, from any source.

It doesn't mean that I have to cultivate some sort of animosity towards intellectual property as a whole, and/or compulsively release everything that I create into the public domain all the time. Because that too creates mental barriers.

It's about being able to choose my response more consciously, and not be controlled by the mental construct of intellectual property, one way or the other. Easier said than done, but it is a promising practice.

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Das | October 21, 2011
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.

I definitely think so.

For example ... Even "Real Estate" is an artificial idea when we consider that transients can't own that which they move away from (eventually give up)

We all are passing through life and it makes no sense to have full ownership of anything past our life time. It is good to help the next in line .. but passing on stuff that people did not earn has always messed up humans.

However entrenched in time and practice, wrong ideas have a way of giving way to something more meaningful. Easy access to all things by everyone is what changed the paradigm. No turning back !

Das M

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Kartik Subbarao | October 21, 2011
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Along the lines of "you can't take it with you", it appears that Steve Jobs may have stayed too hungry and too foolish towards the end of his life:

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“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”
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How sad. Although he was a multibillionaire who didn't seem to be too attached to his material wealth, he apparently could not let go of his possessiveness to what he perceived as his intellectual property.

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