There&#x27;s a fundamental difference between physical property and intellectual &quot;property&quot;: an owner of the former can conceivably hire guards to protect or restrict access to that property, since physical objects are generally localized phenomena.<p>But there is no conceivable way to enforce things like copyright or patents without something at least as powerful as a government, since they are supposed to be binding on every single person, everywhere, all the time.<p>IMO the concept of &quot;intellectual property&quot; is at best orthogonal to that of a &quot;free market&quot;.