Why Intellectual Property Cannot be "Owned"

Q: You say that intellectual property is not property. Yet you say that I can own the product of my labor. As musicians, isn't music (an intellectual property) the product of our labor? As such, do we not have the right to own our music?

A: To own the product of labor someone must own the labor and the resources used to create the product. You can own your labor (or temporarily rent the labor owned by another) in producing music but you cannot own the main resource in its production, sound.

You can't own sound, only your ability and the devices used to produce sound but once a sound is made it dissipates and is impossible to control or own. You can't own sound any more than you can own the air it travels through nor the pressure change it causes in listeners eardrums. You cannot own the brain signals it triggers within another. Once an idea travels to the brain of another you cannot own it. It would be like dumping money in someone else's mailbox and expecting it to be there when you come to retrieve it.

Putting sound waves together may be work, but since you don't own the source material, the product of your work is not entirely yours to own. Do you own all the ideas and information (like the notes and rhythm) used in your song? You can't own G over middle C so how can you own it in the context of a song?

Take this analogy for example - If I steal someones bike to break down and build into a different bike, do I own the new bike? Of course not. Because I didn't own the resources I used. Take any form of idea - words for example. If I take a book and change one word, I have used my work to create a new pattern and thus a new idea. Do I then own that story? No, because I didn't own the source material. Likewise, all the author did was re-combine letters, words, phrases and sentences that already existed. He never owned the source material. We speak words every day that others have said, and combined long before us. Should we be forced to pay royalties every time we benefit from the words of another?

As musicians, we use notes that have been used time after time. There are only 12 notes in western music. Often, in music, the same exact chord progressions are used by artists time and time again. Yet each claim their song to be original. When multiple people claim the same chords for a song who owns those chords in that pattern?

(The Axis of Awesome shows how dozens of artists are claiming to own the same song)
How different must the pattern of information be for it to be a new idea? All information and ideas are just a copy and combination of ideas, sounds, images, and other information that already exists. So where do we draw the line as to what ideas are owned and what ideas are copied, especially when ALL ideas are copied one way or another. The fact is that it is impossible to answer and must rely on some arbitrary subjective opinion. Intellectual property means that someone decides what is a crime based on the same arbitrary subjective opinion.

To reiterate, in order to own something, someone must own the labor and the source material. Letters, words, images, sounds, and all foundational resources of "intellectual property"cannot be owned. Since you cannot own those resources, then all things produced from those resources cannot be owned. That which cannot be owned cannot be stolen.

Ideas cannot be owned or stolen. They only be communicated or forgotten.

an example