> Part of the return the public is supposed to see for granting legal protection to IP is that the IP is then made widely available (as well as eventually entering the public domain) and can be built upon for personal use, commentated upon, etc.

That's really well said. A bit of a tangent, but it's similar to how software patents should be as well. If you want to patent a software feature, then you have to include a working code sample and that sample code loses copyright protection forever.