Macmillan Publishing CEO Richard Charkin is confused about the difference between intellectual "property" - a nonexclusive good where one person's use does not directly detract from others - and real property, which only one person can possess. While both have value and both deserve legal protection, the protections need not necessarily be identical, because the goods themselves behave differently.

Charkin would rather gloss over that distinction, because he doesn't like the current laws in the United States which give information different protections from physical goods. To connect the two different types of goods, he stole a few real laptops belonging to Google, Inc. at a trade show, stating that no sign had been posted forbidding the stealing of the laptops, in a humorous though flawed analogy to Google BookSearch. Engadget has a good commentary on the stunt, with some interesting comments split between people confused as to the specifics of the Book Search Library Project and those correcting the record.

Whatever the merits of the lawsuit over Google Book Search (and most IPac members feel pretty strongly about that), scanning books falls under the purview of copyright law, while taking other people's laptops does not. As one commenter on the Engadget thread put it, "Wouldn't it have been more fitting for Charkin to have made a duplicate COPY of the laptop?" The book publishers, like the RIAA, MPAA, Viacom, and countless others frustrated with the balance struck by copyright law (even the very one-sided balance in their favor we have today) continue to push the comparison between their valuable information and physical property, in an attempt to convince the public that the two are the same. We can't let them get away with it.

Update: Lessig has a post that makes substantially the same point, with more good legal details.