zlacker

> It expands the definition of property by institutionally conferring the status of "owned" to a functional configuration of bits distributed over thousands of computers. Do we have this concept for other things?

Intellectual property has been a thing for a long, long time. You don't literally need to have a physical thing somewhere for laws to apply.

>>Pragma+(OP)
Thank you. My yes (which was left off of the quote for some reason) includes intellectual property. I, like many people, are aware of the concept of intangible property. Dollars in my bank account are another example of intangible property.

I'm curious why you included a statement about IP existing for a long time. Is there something about the duration of existence that makes something important? Descriptive statements are notoriously difficult to transform into normative statements.