"Copyright has become the single most serious impediment to access to knowledge". Copyright scholar Pamela Samuelson.

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Aaron-Swartz-Opening-a...

Joseph Stiglitz, "Knowledge as a Global Public Good," in Global Public Goods: International Cooperation in the 21st Century, Inge Kaul, Isabelle Grunberg, Marc A. Stern (eds.), United Nations Development Programme, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 308-325.

http://s1.downloadmienphi.net/file/downloadfile6/151/1384343...

What the academic publishing industry calls "theft" the world calls "research": Why Sci-Hub is so popular

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4p2rwk/what_th...

It's in the sense that the current implementation of idea ownership is mostly a ham-fisted exercise in rent-seeking. Ideas work best when left to spread, mix, and be freely used.

It's a complex topic, really - on the one hand, you have the boneheaded stupidity of software patents, or of music and movie licensing (that have little to do with compensating original authors and performers, and is instead about middlemen getting rent); but on the other hand, you have drug research and $manybillion silicon fabs, which kind of require IP protection even exist.

This post contains most of what I would want to say about it.

http://harmful.cat-v.org/economics/intellectual_property/