A Great Idea Lives Forever. Should not Its Copyright? ..eh.. NO it shouldn't!

A Great Idea Lives Forever. Shouldn’t Its Copyright? - New York Times

Mark Helprin shows perfectly the fallacy of confusing property (physical property) with the made up term "intellectual property". The two are not the same thing and trying to use the same terms to describe them is wrong and leads to silly notions.

For example, the author talks of an artist "work" as the writing a novel or a song, but the actual "work" is complete once the original manuscript is written. This object (the manuscript) would be his or his heirs forever. But a "copy" of the work, long hand, typewritten, or digitally copied, is the physical labor of someone else. This leads to another "object" which the original author doesn't control under any natural law. An author simply cannot publish a work AND prevent it from being copied at the same time. Thus copyright law is needed and it is very different from laws governing physical property.

Mr. Helprin sees no problem with himself and his heirs getting paid for there creative "work" year after year as long as someone is benefiting from it. But if this concept was applied to physical objects, I would be paying the carpenters that built my house a little every month. No one seems to think that carpenters should continue to be paid for the items they make, so why should authors?

It is absurd to continue to treat "great ideas" physical property, they are not.