Unto the pure, all things are pure

My apologies, but Thomas Jefferson was wrong, perhaps just this once.  Not [all men are created equal]. (I won't split hair over whether it should be all men are not created equal or all men are created not equal.) You must have heard of this anecdote before: if every possession in the world today were confiscated and then divided out equally among every living person, after ten minutes, the whole world will be unequal again, assuming everyone acts rationally .  There will be the Bill Gates'es who would successfully trade their bottle caps for medals.  There will be others who would give away their farms for something trivial, trivial as in trivial to you and me. The ugly and yet beautiful fact is that the world functions because of inequality.  If all men are equal, the world grinds to a complete halt.  Life freezes, and, if the equality is really maintained, everyone drops dead. Society works because everyone places a different value on the same thing....

These are my private laws of economics: Heresy #1: People respond to incentives Heresy #2: People respond differently to (the same) incentives, and this creates a functioning society. Heresy #3: Not [All men are created equal] . I have an advanced degree in Economics from the School of Hard Knocks.  I missed many classes.  But as there was no government in the School of Hard Knocks, I decided to award myself the degree anyway.

If IP owners want everyone to treat their IP just like any other property, then perhaps they should start by treating their IP just like any other property. First (not in any order of importance), the freedom to use IP should be similar to the freedom to use all other property.  When you buy a chair from Ikea, you can do anything you like to it.  Sit on it.  Put things on it.  Use it as fuel for a BBQ.  Even if Ikea does not sell chairs but only rent chars, you are free to do whatever you want with a chair, as long as you are able to return it, less fair wear and tear, at the end of the rental period.  But when you buy Mac OS, you are not permitted to install it on non-Apple hardware. Then, we should also be free to transfer ownership of the IP with the same ease to transfer ownership of other property.  If someone threw his old TV set out of his house to let the garbage collector pick it up, in most jurisdictions, people are free to pick it up and...