[ I think I'll give this a gold star. There are a lot of arguments in here that aren't new, but they're presented together, cohesively, and well supported by argument and citation.

The key statement, as I read it :

"None of this is intended to suggest that intellectual property is a bad idea. Far from it. Rather, the point is that we cannot and should not seek to internalize all positive externalities and prevent “free riding” on intellectual property. Granting intellectual property rights imposes a complex set of economic costs, and it can be justified only to the extent those rights are necessary to provide incentives to create. The economic justification for intellectual property simply does not map to the justification we offer for real property, because negative externalities dominate the analysis of real property and positive externalities dominate the analysis of intellectual property."

Thoughts? -k]

SSRN-Property, Intellectual Property, and Free Riding by Mark Lemley