Feb 26 2008
Intellectual property is a silly euphemism
I’m tempted to claim that line as my own and see what happens, but alas, it comes from this Cory Doctorow column in The Guardian. It’s well-written and to the point, probably something I’ll be assigning in 516 this term..
The first half was a little strange–it felt like either Cory or his editor was insisting on Britishness. “Property, after all, is a useful, well-understood concept in law and custom, the kind of thing that a punter can get his head around without too much thinking” is a sentence that could just as easily read “…the kind of thing that we can get our heads around…” The flat/loo thing I could live with, but “punter” really stuck out for me.
By the second half, though, that insistence is gone. Makes me wonder if he wasn’t instructed or edited to make sure that he resonated with Brits before getting to the main arg.
Not that any of this is relevant to the piece itself… ;-)
cgb