An intellectual work comprises the words on a sheet of paper, as opposed to a mere sheet of paper. Both may be property. A sheet of paper is material property. A poem is intellectual property.

Aside from the practical issues arising from differences in tangibility and reproducibility, an individual’s rights to both forms of property are the same.

Copyright is not a right but a mercantile privilege apparently created for the benefit of publishers, and subtly to establish control over printing presses (the state cares not who is notionally in control, only that such control is subject). The cultural interests of the public were added as the original motivation a long time later when the history books could be rewritten.

Copyright suspends the individual’s right to manufacture copies or derivatives of their own intellectual property unless they have obtained licence from the copyright holder who has been granted this privilege in their place. The copyright holder of a work is initially the manufacturer of the ‘original’, but such copyright can be transferred, e.g. to a publisher.

Without copyright, purchasers of intellectual property enjoy the restoration of their natural right to manufacture copies or derivatives (and sell them in a free market without royalty). In this way mankind is free once again to engage in a richly evolving cultural exchange.

Nevertheless, this restoration of rights does not weaken respect for intellectual property, but strengthens it. There is still no right to copy someone else’s private intellectual property.