O'Reilly Network Weblogs: All Property Is Intellectual: Real Estate & The 62 Cent Cracker

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http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/6933

All Property Is Intellectual: Real Estate & The 62 Cent Cracker

by Spencer Critchley
Jun. 15, 2005

As I've been thinking lately about file-sharing and the "Information wants to be free" argument, I've had a couple of reminders that all property is intellectual property:

1) I went hiking in the Santa Lucia Mountains above Carmel Valley, California. I saw beautiful landscapes such as this one:

And I passed a sign letting me know that while my previous steps had been on public property, the next ones would be on private property:

What was the difference? If I had asked the trail I was walking on, it would have had nothing to say on its legal status. Some people decided that part of this land is public, and part is private. If we all agree, the private part can be bought, sold or rented for money.

2) I learned recently that the "real" in "real estate" doesn't refer to reality, but to ownership by the king. (Does everyone else already know this?) Here's an explanation from laborlawtalk.com:

"...in a monarchy, all land was considered the property of the king. Thus originally the term real estate was equivalent to "royal estate", real originating from the French royale, as it was the French-speaking Normans who introduced feudalism to England and thus the English language; cognate to Spanish real."

3) Today, we bought some crackers from Whole Foods, a great organic food store which nevertheless is sometimes referred to as Whole Paycheck. The crackers were eight in number, and $5.00 in price. 62 cents a cracker. What is being sold here is not the crackers, but the experience of paying that much for crackers. It makes you feel, uh... Healthy? Wealthy? Inattentive? Well, one of those things, but it ain't the crackers.

Property is an intellectual concept, in the real world or the digital world, and it's up to us to decide what gets paid for and how much, not some mystical quality in being information -- it's all information.

Spencer Critchley is an award-winning producer, writer and composer with experience in digital media, film, broadcasting and the music business.