There's nothing imaginary about IP. Or rather, it's just as imaginary as any other type of property. You may say that land or houses are more real than IP, but they are also just human conceptions and conveniences. All there really is is matter/energy and the space it occupies. Everything else is "imaginary". Well, we should really say "emergent", as that more properly describes what's going on. And it may be true that IP is not exactly the same kind of property as land, but land is not the same kind of property as a loan on a balancesheet, or a contract, or a person's body. Property is merely the idea that someone can have socially recognized control over some particular item in the universe. And we need not have government create the idea either. Musicians and programmers could, in a world without governments, still create the concept of IP, by refusing to release their products without insisting on contracts that stipulate the terms of further usage and distribution, just as landowners and blacksmiths would. The market may or may not be willing to put up with this. And the market may or may not be willing to put up with strict property laws on every piece of land (as many nations formerly did not).

There is a difference between physical property and intellectual property to be sure, the main one being that intellectual property can be copied ad infinitum and easily modified without depriving the source of the use of the property. These things must be taken into account, naturally.

However, your analogies aren't that strong. There is nothing natural about owning land. Really anybody could use parts of your land at different times for different uses. A household with a family or a set of roommates has a great deal of shared property where common usage frequently does not deprive one party of the value of the property (though it doesn't infrequently cause problems as well). So really what we have is a spectrum of mutual exclusivity, ranging from word on the street being impossible to control, to one's body, which simply cannot be shared in any capacity. I think it's hard to say that IP is fundamentally different from all other forms of property, without also needing to draw distinctions in traditional physical property that really often aren't relevant.

I'm not a fan of extremely restrictive IP laws and policies, but I can recognize the value of treating IP as a thing in need of protecting in some capacity, especially when it now can be sold and traded, and isn't just some excess product that people who aren't stuck farming all day have time to produce in their spare time. It's an industry and people need to be able to receive the benefits of the fruits of their labor, be it physical labor with bricks and widgets, or mental labor with software and music.

I went and reread the article, and I think in this case, the farmer was in the wrong.

Funny, I consider the libertarians to be the trolls.

I don't see why IP law should be in a different category than other property, if you are in the strong property rights crowd. Of course, property rights must be defended either by the property-holder, or by a third party (the government, usually), so it's not surprising that the government is now heavily involved, as the government is also heavily involved in physical property rights.

I bet there would be. Most libertarians I've seen are just fine with property rights. In fact, strong property rights are needed because the concept of the commons is anti-thetical to the purely market-based approach that libertarianism requires.

A true taste of the libertarian utopia that we can all look forward to.

Yes, it did. It was developed as a completely separate product from Windows starting in the late 80s. They hired people from DEC and worked with IBM. It was a serious project. Take some time to look into the architecture and you might learn some things.

You're not really making any arguments based on facts here, just railing out the same tired bullshit that Linux fanbois are so fond of. You clearly don't know anything about Windows NT's design, so it'd be best if you just stopped commenting.

That may have been true for Windows 95/98, but NT was never based on DOS or really had anything to do with it.

Why is xkcd always obligatory? Can't people just post it because they think it might be relevant or funny? Is it actually required?

I can only read that as some sort of innuendo.

It's generally a lot cheaper than other medical care. Go to a hospital and come back and complain to me about a 40 dollar copay at a psychologist's office.

All this technology doesn't spring forth magically. It exists and is produced under a massive global system of powerful institutions, and supply and distribution chains, to say nothing of systems of education and healthcare and food production to provide for all the people that make these things happen.

People aren't going to agree, and there will be enforcement in that case, be it from the government or some private army or posse of vigilantes. Personally, I'd rather have a republican government having a monopoly on enforcement than a multitude of private forces. We've had periods in history like that and usually they result in a lot of violence and social disorder.