I know that by now, most of us do have quite an idea of what intellectual property is. Anyhow knowing the concept is not enough. We eagerly encourage people to protect and to be respectful of everything that has been created or invented by someone else. That obviously includes abstracts. Maybe it is quite difficult to understand the reason for this respect until it happens to you and your personal interests and image are damaged. Still there are many arguments to discuss regarding IP. Some legislators, courts and intellectual property holders have pushed the limits of justice until the edge.
Intellectual property issues are mostly about economic interests. It is true that some IP holders fight for their rights to manage the distribution of their materials but when a legal fight surrounds IP monetary implications are the priority. It is important to understand the reasons why so many people have no other way-out than to illegally download or copy material from the internet (the most common tool for in-home piracy).
Since in the last years so many problems have emerged around IP, legal institutions have taken part and many extreme measures have been applied. For example, if you want to move the tracks from a CD you bought on an authorized store to your Apple's iPod the copy protection will not let you..even more, if you want to criticize Vivendi Universal (just to quote an example) on your website or blog, the plug will not let you because it is making an unflattering reference to the company's trademark. In each of these examples, your freedom runs up against IP; and it is just a little proof of why customers are also being affected by the measures of IP control.
Intellectual property serves important public purposes: encouraging creativity, innovation, and protection of the public from being defrauded by misleading advertising but it should not invade your freedom as an internet user. At the same time, IP must be carefully limited to protect you rights to create, access and distribute information, as well as to develop new ways to do so. Remember that Internet and digital technologies exist to empower consumers, creators, innovators, scholars and citizens. Not everybody counts on the economical demands of some IP holders. A balance must be set between both parts without getting into extremes.