[arin-ppml] On USG 'granting of rights' (was: ARIN-PPML 2015-2)

[Seth Johnson]

On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 6:42 PM, Seth Johnson <seth.p.johnson at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't think you'll find very much in the way of common law rights to
> information as such.  It kinda has to be a statute to start with --
> and statutes giving property in information aren't really something
> that happens much, except in the areas you mention -- which were
> accorded to Congress to grant.

(and I am not one to call these rights "property," specifically
because so much confusion has been wrought about information as a
result of the notion that statutory exclusive rights such as copyright
are "intellectual property."  You only find the term "intellectual
property" advocated in France, before about 1980.  They're exclusive
rights.  There are a few of those things that have been accorded to
authors.  :-)  )



>
> On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 6:38 PM, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 6:24 PM, Seth Johnson <seth.p.johnson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> If it's copyright, the judge won't do that.  There's no such thing as
>>> an "exclusive right to use" in copyright.
>>
>> Hi Seth,
>>
>> IP addresses are definitely not copyrights. Or trademarks, patents or
>> trade secrets. So far as I know, they're not any kind of
>> *intellectual* property whose existence derives from statute and, in
>> the U.S., from the Constitution itself.
>>
>> I suspect they're Common Law *Intangible* Property which is something
>> else entirely. At least they are in common law jurisdictions which
>> includes all of the U.S. and Canada and if I'm not mistaken everywhere
>> else in the ARIN region as well.
>>
>> Much of Europe operates on Roman Civil Law rather than English Common
>> Law. The legal foundations over there are so different I couldn't
>> begin to speculate how IP addresses fit.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Bill Herrin
>>
>>
>> --
>> William Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
>> Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>