An argument could be made that intellectual property is in fact a civil liberty itself; the right to own private property is a common and well-established civil liberty. Proponents of intellectual property argue that while obviously intellectual property is different in nature than other types, it is property none the less.
What mechanism is there to observe who 'owns' a piece of information? An abstract notion of mechanism?
What does private property mean in the domain of bit strings? Why don't 'intellectual property owners' treat their bit strings like other private property and keep it private?
What birthright grants private citizens or their incorporations state-enforced control of combinations of cultural or technical ideas? Do 'intellectual property owners' create their 'property' from nothing? From where do they source their input material? Have they stood on the shoulders of giants, on the broken backs of thousands of generations of ancestors, or are they special, unique snowflakes creating 'intellectual property' in a vacuum from the godhead?
