This is very true, and its shocking sometimes to realize how your "ownership" of physical property can be restricted by third parties.
The key difference between physical property and intellectual property is the ease of rights enforcement. It's easy to detect when someone has infringed your rights on your own physical property. The progress of the internet, on the other hand, makes it constantly harder to detect and punish infringement of intellectual property rights. It is still unknown whether reversing this trend will retard the potential of the Internet, but certain recent legislative attempts lead me to believe so.
I think that the debate will ultimately turn on the question of ease of enforcement. All the philosophical trappings of whether certain rights should be granted is irrelevant if they can't be granted.
The key difference between physical property and intellectual property is the ease of rights enforcement. It's easy to detect when someone has infringed your rights on your own physical property. The progress of the internet, on the other hand, makes it constantly harder to detect and punish infringement of intellectual property rights. It is still unknown whether reversing this trend will retard the potential of the Internet, but certain recent legislative attempts lead me to believe so.
I think that the debate will ultimately turn on the question of ease of enforcement. All the philosophical trappings of whether certain rights should be granted is irrelevant if they can't be granted.