Joel: What Dan’s arguing is essentially how the real business world works. It is completely impossible to defend all claims to intellectual property. Pragmatically speaking, you cannot control an idea once it has been shared, and even modern indsutry/engineering acknowledges this; that’s why they shroud their new ideas/products in mystery during the research and development cycles. If a competitor found out about the idea, the competitor could steal it. If large engineering firms can acknowledge the simple fact of such pragmatics, I don’t know why it’s beyond such as the music industry to do so.

What about convergent evolution of ideas? Two people might have the same idea; if they have it at precisely the same moment, how do you decide which gets the IPR (intellectual property rights).

Finally, at what level of thought ‘ought IPRs be considered valid? For example, if I could somehow prove the IPR to something ubiquitous, like sliced bread, does it seem right to then require some part of the proceed of every loaf of sliced bread to be given to me?

Your property right to a scarce resource is a right to the *physical integrity* of the good. That is, others may not take it from you by force or attack it. Ideas *cannot* be made into property.

Just because you want to download and steal free music is no reason to come up with this excuse. Go to the back of the class.