Re: Only themselves to blame
Compare the amount of resources devoted to defining, protecting and enforcing "intellectual property" today with the situation 100 years ago. Heck, even 50 years ago.
"Intellectual property" has been pushed by the USA, among all countries, as a way to pretend that the inexhaustible realm of "ideas" is an eternally-expanding frontier that anyone can exploit. Because what's the alternative? - letting the new generation of go-getters have actual land and real property would mean - (gasp) - the rich of today letting go of some of the stuff.
Which they have no intention of doing voluntarily, and no American government has anything like an appetite to force them to.
So instead they've built up this edifice of "intellectual property", where people can stake out their claims and exploit them without dispossessing the already-rich. The only people disadvantaged are newcomers, and the poor, and who ever gave a toss about them?
So yeah, it's very much "America's fault". Fifty years ago we wouldn't have had to worry about this kind of nonsense. But this is the world America built, and now we all have to live in it.
