The Red Academic

Property is theft anyway - at least, that's what I tell myself when stealing from my flatmates' shelves in the fridge...

"If property is theft then intellectual property is just stealing from the communal body of knowledge. My only hope is if ideas cannot be owned by anyone, if ideas exist purely as selfless facets of human wisdom rather than claimed & copyrighted snippets of someone's thoughts. Losing copyright over intellectual property would mean that no-one would strive for originality, to say something new, because they could not derive personal glory or fame for it - if good, it would be shamelessly repackaged and plagiarised. That way originality would no longer be the pinnacle of human achievement. This would leave people free to learn for learning's sake, not for fame, and search for what is 'right' or what seems truthful, rather than what is original. Too often people say something purely because it's new, exciting, unusual - with little regard for the truth of their statement.
Surely pointless to distract readers from the pursuit of human truths, in search of novelty?"