Intellectual property rights are already different than other intangible personal property rights which are different than tangible personal property rights which are different than real property rights.
They're inherently different: creative work (especially in a digital, trivially replicated format) is non-rivalrous, and at least partially non-excludable. "You wouldn't download a car." [0]
Property rights are a social technology to balance incentives and peacefully negotiate scarce resources (including time and effort). It's helpful to think about them in reverse: that they encode legitimacy to use force (usually via the State) against anyone who violates the right. That doesn't make the force right or wrong, a priori; it simply describes what happens. Exactly when that force is legitimate is the question at hand.
"Intellectual Property" is a post-hoc neologism. What we actually have are three very specific institutions: copyrights, patents, and trademarks. The last is arguably more like regulation than property: persistent brand identity to prevent fraud and confusion. Copyrights and patents are extremely clear in the Constitution, that their purpose is collective, moreso than an individual right for its own sake: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Hence why they expire: at some point, the incentive has already been provided, and the body politic benefits more by their being open-sourced.
Whatever "rights" framework one subscribes to, it is an extremely thorny question, whether they include the right to alienate those rights, to give them up on purpose. We allow people to alienate their labor, an hour at a time; but not to do so for a lifetime (voluntarily sell one's self into slavery). Many US states now refuse to defend "non-compete" clauses: that you cannot constrain your future self from working for a competitor for X years, even if you wanted to, even for very lucrative terms in the contract.
I'd argue that intellectual/creative works, are more like non-compete clauses: you actually create more bargaining power if you limit the scope, and take away the capacity to give up future bargaining power.
Your car (or other real/chattel property) is capital which can be used directly for gain (e.g., commuting to work, driven for hire), loaned, used as collateral in loans, have its likeness or image used, amongst other potential financially-beneficial actions, all without sale or transfer of title.
They're absolutely different. IP rights are a creating of artificial scarcity for what would otherwise be an infinitely-copyable work. Physical property rights are a codification of rights to a naturally scarce item.
IP rights require specific limitations on speech for everyone who is not the owner of an IP. It's walling off some expression as "copyrighted" so that no one other than the "owner" can express them (in a commercial way at least). Compare this to traditional property rights that merely prevent you from walking up to the owner and taking their (non copyable stuff) - a much lesser restriction.
This is why IP rights need to have limitations like a time limit, but I don't see why other limits like non-transferability are out of the question.
What? Car leasing is a massive market, and a large percentage of people and companies are very happy to pay to access cars and trucks without owning the title. Same goes for companies happily building on top of leasehold properties whenever it makes financial sense for them.
And as for IP, with the time limits, patents and copyrights are inherently defined to expire, but are definitely not worthless.
Valid argument. Car analogies usually break down at some point, and leasing is a definite weakness of that one.
But at the same time, hopefully you won't complain about the encroaching "You will own nothing and be happy about it" corporate ethos, if you want to restrict peoples' rights to buy and sell property of either a physical or intellectual nature.
Good point, but in this case I'm arguing for the exact opposite: I'm suggesting that (natural) people are the ones owning IP, and companies only lease it. I was just making the case that a lease is not "worthless".
>But at the same time, hopefully you won't complain about the encroaching "You will own nothing and be happy about it" corporate ethos
This has come about due to a strengthening of IP rights, and could be reduced with a weakening of those same rights back to where they were a few decades ago.
In the 80s and early 90s, companies like Sony, Nintendo, and Sega tried to use copyright and Trademark and patent and other IP based rights to legislate their consoles and keep people from interoperating with products and software they sold. The courts correctly found against them: That general consumer product rights, even in their minimal state in the US, gave consumers the right to buy products that could interact with their other products, and that companies that sold those products were not allowed to prevent it, generally following first sale doctrine.
You as a video game seller could literally violate Sega's trademark rights to make your game work on the sega consoles, as verified by a judge, that was "Fair use". If you could find a way to get by Nintendo's security chip, you could sell games for their consoles, and Nintendo could not stop you through lawfare. You could build an emulator of the sony console that you sell for cheaper than a playstation, and that was also fair game. You could reverse engineer the IBM PC bios in order to sell machines that could use the same software that was written for those PCs. All these things were litigated in court and affirmed by judges as "No, consumers have rights and companies should not be allowed to stop you from buying stuff from other people that works on their machine"
Companies didn't like this though, because having to compete with someone else selling stuff for your console meant you had to compete. So they got the DMCA, and now all they have to do is put a teeny bit of "copyright protection" code somewhere, and it is now a crime to interoperate with that system.
The reason computers stopped being so interoperable and stopped being so open and stopped cultivating a vibrant market like that is because you just can't do those things anymore. Microsoft can legally prevent you from writing software that interacts with systems in ways they do not want. You cannot sell non-Nintendo approved games on the Switch like you could on the SNES not only because cryptography and computer security improved, but because trying to get around that can now be a crime!
Imagine if physical product manufacturers had such insane laws benefitting them. Not only would your car need to take Ford branded gasoline, but any company trying to produce a gasoline that was compatible with Ford cars to compete with Ford branded gasoline would likely violate a bunch of laws and lose their shirts in court.
Ferrari can only enforce those terms by refusing to sell you any more cars, though. There's not much they can do beyond that.
GM also comes to mind, where they void the warranty if you flip your new Z06 or ZR1 within 6 months. It's nothing more or less than an encumbrance on the title, and they shouldn't be able to demand that without consideration in the form of a discount. But they can, because they have monopoly power in that particular niche.
Key point is that Ferrari and Corvette are niche markets. Car customers in general wouldn't put up with it, because there's plenty of competition for their business.
Tangent to your point, the Bible requires that home ownership work exactly like this. You can sell your family's home and lands, but every 50th year, the Jubilee year, the lands must be returned to your family.
The intent was to prevent permanent poverty (poverty = not owning land), and any slaves are also freed on the Jubilee (because slavery was also a poverty thing then). Today, though, it'd probably be more of a tool of a permanent ruling class, so it's probably a good thing that Jews and Christians mostly ignore that section.
Christians don't need to ignore it, it's part of the Old Covenant. Jesus said he fulfilled the requirements of the old covenant, the new one is very basic "love God, love your neighbour, don't sin".
It (Leviticus 25) was a tool of a ruling people-group; it kept Jews special and relegated other people's to potentially be slaves, and to not own property in Jewish lands. Also have special privileges to priests (Levites).
I mean that's part of why it's not relevant to Christians - per Galatians 3:28 - there's not supposed to be racial distinctions! And there are not supposed to be priests either.
So, if I sell you my house or car I can't sign away my rights on it? - Sure, there is a difference between material and intellectual property ...
Against swindling there needs to be protection from fraud, but that exists in most legislative systems.