ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the contrast between intellectual property rights as a form of private property, and the need in any well-run society, even a market-based one, to have a set of goods that remain public. Language is perhaps the quintessential public good. Without the free flow of words, indeed there can be no public. It is only because in public discourse meanings are continually in flux, always open to new shadings and redefinitions, regardless of what quarter they come from, that society can navigate the continual changes it itself undergoes and still retain any semblance of communal coherence, even the minimal sort needed for a functioning market. Often, sidewalks technically are privately owned, but in these cases they can only remain sidewalks when their different owners are required to allow essentially unrestrained and open public use, as is in fact the case in those jurisdictions that permit private ownership.
