>
Another, ancillary topic, would be the concept of "Intellectual Property".
How it arose and how it allows the patenting and copyrighting of ideas and thoughts, a concept that was argued against by most of our founding fathers.
>

I think some fought against the concept because traditional notions of property were applied. One of the basic concepts of property is the right to exclude others. Once an idea is shared, the power to exclude is lost. If the power to exclude is an absolute attribute of a right in property, by defintion, ideas cannot be the subject of property. This is essentially the Jeffersonian view of whether ideas and inventions can be property. He felt they could not.

As you might have guessed, I don't agree with this narrow view. I say narrow because a very strict interpretation of what property is - is used as the basis of the idea.

The idea that software cannot be patented and/or copyrighted to me, does not make sense. Software programs, when implemented, are a tangible thing. The design of a photo-copier is patentable. The design of a fax machine is patentable. Why can't software be patentable?

In one of the links below, it points to some reference about a court stating that computer programs were speech, and are thus protected by the first amendment, and thus cannot be patented. The primary problem is that the court views software only in its design-time state. What about its run-time state? I view software as being like any other tool a business may use. To not afford the creators of software, creators who may be investing millions of dollars in development protection, to me, seems like an idea without merit.

As far as IP eroding freedoms such as freedom of speech, I don't think I can agree with that idea. One questin that has to be resolved is what limitations are imposed via the patent and what limitations are imposed via contract. Two separate legal issues that I suspect get mangled together.

When you purchase software, there is almost always a license agreement. This is a contract. If there are limitations imposed, they may come by way of the contract, not through the enforcement of a property right. All the time, people through contract, waive rights.

I believe in protecting the work of others and I believe in the concept of Intellectual Property as it applies to ideas and software.