The whole problem comes from the whole "Intellectual Property" concept. Patents and Copyright should not be called Intellectual Property. The idea of property exists in conflict with the idea of patent and copyright, which were created to further spur more innovation down the road from others - the whole "living on the shoulders of giants" and all.
Property implies the idea or a certain implementation of creative work is yours for life (and possibly even beyond that). You can't have "property" and then expect others to use it and experiment with that. That's exactly why copyrights and patents were not created as another form of property, but merely as an incentive to create something.
Stallman (I know, I know...) wrote that using "Intellectual Property" term is very very very wrong, specially because it makes people think some stuff is property (it is not) and also make people conflate 4 different laws (Trademark, Patents, Copyright and I forgot the other one) as it was a single thing, and results in totally messed up ideas.
Trademark is not your property, trademark is a registration of who is who, so the government can punish people that are being funny and mislead costumers.
Happily the trademark regulating bodies are still more or less sane, and for example kicked Tim Langdell in the nuts for what he did.
Patents, are not your property either, your property is whatever you built (patents were not supposed to apply to software algorithms as the original laws were written :/), if you want to keep others from doing a copy of your product, actually you can do it like Coca-Cola did: Make it hard to copy, and hide its formula/blueprint/project in a safe.
Patents is a license to manufacture (and thus presumably sell and distribute) the product exclusively for some years, in exchange for you placing into public domain the details of how to create your product, so all humanity can create that product in the future (maybe if you get hit by a bus and cannot do it anymore, or your factory get hit by a meteor, and so on...)
Copyright is as the name says, the right of making copies, it is not supposed to be your property either, copyright when created it was not in the intention of the law authors that people would sell it around like if it was merchandise, back then copyright was created muddled and mixed with the concept of moral rights (that some countries later turned into law too).
The idea of copyright, at least in theory (the real reason for creation of copyright seemly was covert censorship), is that by ensuring the author can choose who can sell copies of his work for some years, he could be safe expending some years to create such work, and then as he sells this work though others, he has money ensured to create his next work and so on.
Mind you, copyright was NOT invented to stop common people from making copies of your work, in fact when it was made, many people were absolutely fine with that, copyright was made for example to stop the asshole behavior of a friend of Baldassare Castiglione, that took his borrowed manuscript, and not only made a copy for himself, but started to make so much copies, that Baldassare when he made a trip from Italy to Spain (when he started the trip that he left the book with his friend) upon arrival he was greeted by people saying that his book was awesome... (yes, he left the book in Italy and travelled to Spain, when he arrived on Spain, people on Spain had lots of copies of his still unfinished book made by a asshole friend in Italy)
The problem here is that you (and mtgx) are using the word "property" in a different way to the way lawyers use it, which is the way it's used in "intellectual property".
To a lawyer, some bundle of rights is a 'property' right if it has a particular set of characteristics, such as being transferable and binding the world.
By the legal definition, patents, copyright, and trademarks are definitely (intangible) property rights. (Well, mostly: in the UK a few of the rights in copyright, known as 'moral rights', aren't property rights: they give you an action in tort only, and can't be transferred).
So e.g. you say "patents is a license to manufacture ... the product exclusively for some years". But this doesn't work. No kind of licence can give you the right to sue a third party: a licence can only stop you from being sued. (An 'exclusive' licence is just one where you the licensor has contracted not to grant a licence to anyone else). To sue a third party (who's made the product without a licence), you need the patent to give you a property right.
It would be equally correct to call them monopolies or, if you want to be really precise, "limited term monopoly grants." In the debate over the patent and copyright clause, the term "monopoly" was used. "Intellectual property" is as tendentious as Stallman says.
People refer to it as "intellectual property" because it has the legal attributes of property--it belongs to a person, who has the legal power to restrict or exclude use by others.
Is this power unlimited in time and scope? No. But that is also true of physical and real property--which, depending on various factors, come with all sorts of restrictions, limitations, and regulations.
I logged in today just to upvote this comment. I have long wondered about people who dismiss concerns over semantics. How can we communicate clearly and honestly with each other if we can't agree on what words mean?
Here is an anecdote about just how much language can affect perception:
One day, Korzybski was giving a lecture to a group of students, and he interrupted the lesson suddenly in order to retrieve a packet of biscuits, wrapped in white paper, from his briefcase. He muttered that he just had to eat something, and he asked the students on the seats in the front row if they would also like a biscuit. A few students took a biscuit. "Nice biscuit, don't you think," said Korzybski, while he took a second one. The students were chewing vigorously. Then he tore the white paper from the biscuits, in order to reveal the original packaging. On it was a big picture of a dog's head and the words "Dog Cookies." The students looked at the package, and were shocked. Two of them wanted to vomit, put their hands in front of their mouths, and ran out of the lecture hall to the toilet. "You see," Korzybski remarked, "I have just demonstrated that people don't just eat food, but also words, and that the taste of the former is often outdone by the taste of the latter."
>I have long wondered about people who dismiss concerns over semantics.
There is no doubt language is frequently misused to further ideology. In fact, this is exactly what OP is doing. He's trying to redefine a universally understood term to fit his particular ideology ("IP is not property" or maybe "information should be free").
There are problems with current laws around IP, but redefining terms is not a way to fix them. Furthermore, most people would not agree with the extreme position that that OP is taking (no IP laws) either, so arguing for semantics is either detrimental, confusing or pointless.
I think that the use of the word property isn't properly aligned with the current law and also isn't the right word to use. That doesn't mean that I believe that all information should be completely free from the moment of creation. A balance is needed and the word 'property' implies too exclusive and permanent a state for either the current law or to an even greater extent my view of a better balance.
I don't believe once published/played/performed the artist/creator has a total exclusive right over the material. The public, fans and anyone that hears or sees the work gain some right over it as it affects their mind and thoughts. This isn't to say that the artist immediately should lose all control and protection but that the people of the culture they put the work into also gain some rights to it. The balance is probably best struck by a duration of exclusive rights and then release although those exclusive rights themselves may have limits.
If you want to keep intellectual property as your own personal property in perpetuity you need to keep it in your own head or otherwise privately secured.
"Semantics" refers to the way we assign substantive meanings to the words we use. So, to answer your question, anyone who wants to have an honest and productive conversation, using precise words to describe coherent ideas, is someone who must necessarily care about semantics.
Property implies the idea or a certain implementation of creative work is yours for life (and possibly even beyond that). You can't have "property" and then expect others to use it and experiment with that. That's exactly why copyrights and patents were not created as another form of property, but merely as an incentive to create something.