While I agree that our current intellectual property system is doing a great deal of harm (particularly due to it being slanted in favor of monied interests), there is a protect-the-little-guy rationale for some form of copyright.

Let's imagine a world without copyright. Suppose I spend a year writing a novel. This novel is great; it has the capacity to become the #1 bestseller, provided the right marketing is there. I go to my publisher and enter into a contract saying that I'll let them read my manuscript in exchange for them promising not to publish or sell it until we've worked out a deal.

So far so good. Contracts keep me protected in the world without copyright. I give them the manuscript, they love it, and they publish it.

All is well until a huge publishing company notices my book and starts printing and marketing it, without paying me or my publisher a dime. They manage to sell 100 times as many copies as my publisher, because mine is a small, independent operation, and the big company has a sophisticated and well-funded marketing machine.

This is one area where intellectual property laws, if properly designed, would protect smaller entities against larger ones. And that's where I think the real value of (hypothetical) intellectual property laws lies.