“Intellectual property” is a silly euphemism

Cory Doctorow says “Intellectual property” is one of those ideologically loaded terms that can cause an argument just by being uttered. Fundamentally, the stuff we call “intellectual property” is just knowledge – ideas, words, tunes, blueprints, identifiers, secrets, databases. This stuff is similar to property in some ways: it can be valuable, and sometimes you need to invest a lot of money and labour into its development to realise that value.