First of all, let's talk about how intellectual property differs from other forms of property laws, to see why it is so controversial.
With normal property, you own a specific thing---that car, that book, that bushel of corn. With intellectual property, you own an entire idea---the concept of electromagnetic braking, Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, the Roundup Ready corn strain.
When you own a specific thing, someone else could only have it if they take it away from you. Thus, conventional notions of property make sense.
But when you own an idea, someone can have it while you still have it; they can "take" it without actually taking it. The word "piracy" is actually profoundly bizarre; intellectual property infringement is basically nothing like piracy (as in, actual theft of ships by force), because no one is hurt and nothing is taken from the person who "owns" it.
Intellectual property directly introduces inefficiency into the market, because it effectively creates a monopoly; and as we all know, monopolies raise prices too high and produce too little output. This creates deadweight loss which makes our economy less efficient.
That said, there are reasons to think that intellectual property may be worthwhile. The gains may be worth the cost.
The one that economists care about most is the idea that intellectual property incentivizes innovation; we want people to invent and share new ideas. But since it costs a great deal to come up with a very good idea but it costs very little to copy someone's idea, there's a concern that as soon as you share your new idea, someone else will copy it and sell it for cheap. This would actually be good for everyone else, but bad for you; most economists are actually pretty okay with that outcome. But if you expect that someone is just going to steal it before you can make any money off it, the fear is that you may not bother trying to come up with new ideas in the first place; and that would be very bad indeed. The technological and economic progress of humanity over centuries has been driven largely by the invention of new ideas. We want new ideas as much as possible.
If indeed intellectual property strongly incentivizes innovation, that is a powerful argument in its favor; however, evidence that it does so is actually surprisingly weak. Most innovation seems to happen by accident, or is done by people who are simply curious and interested in creating new things. Some is actively funded by the government, especially for military purposes. While some innovation is spurred by intellectual property, empirical estimates suggest it's actually not very much.
There is also a question of fairness: It's your idea, why shouldn't you be allowed to say how it is used? This makes the most sense for things like books and music, where it's quite clear that nobody else could have created that exact same thing besides you. This is copyright.
But it really seems to break down in the case of patent: How do we know nobody else could have thought of that drug, or that electrical component, or that design of airplane wing flap? Most patents are on small, incremental improvements in existing technologies, and while laws generally require that they not be "obvious", this is a very vague concept and it's actually quite common for people to discover new technologies independently.
Trademark is often considered intellectual property, but it probably shouldn't be, as basically nobody has a problem with it. Trademarks simply say that nobody can claim to be you---they can't produce a different product and say that it came from your company. I can make a cola drink, but I can't call it Coca-Cola. I can write a novel about space battles, but I can't call it Star Wars. We need trademarks, at least to some degree, simply to protect consumers from fraud and allow companies to establish brand reputation.
Another concern is that intellectual property rights keep getting expanded. Terms get extended, whole new categories of ideas get included (such as genes and algorithms). Even if intellectual property makes sense for novels and cars, does it really make sense for genes and algorithms?
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