They meant “made a business out of converting files between formats”, I.e. those “mp4 to mov” sites. Supposedly they’d be on the hook for converting copyrighted content, in this Funko world where basically touching their IP in some user-done way torches the whole business.

> It’s so wrong that it makes me wonder “does this person understand anything at all about the bare fundamentals of intellectual property?”

You really don’t have to assume the worst or attack them for using the wrong word here.

Considering intellectual property doesn't exist, I wouldn't fault him for not knowing anything about its fundamentals.

Given that three of the four kinds of intellectual property are mentioned (and simultaneously conflated) in one statement, I think the author was trying for a satirical statement about intellectual property... but this falls hard into Poe's Law territory, I just can't tell if it was meant to be satire or if it was actually an honest belief.

it's a made up word for a bullshit concept we'll be free of very soon; many of us already live our lives free of such trifles