Calling it property allows for this bizarre concept of a form of "theft" that still leaves you with the thing "stolen" from you.
"It is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all... It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society."
So in that sense I don't think it's an altogether misleading analogy, although of course the ability to copy without taking makes it very different from tangible property. But both are ultimately social conventions, and both exist supposedly for the common good. If that common good cannot be demonstrated, and even moreso if there's demonstrable harm, the conventions can change.
So, in other words, it's property.
There's nothing that guarantees a particular lump of atoms are "yours" besides a government-granted monopoly to control that lump. The atoms don't care.
That is a different class of concept than so-called “intellectual property”.
You don't own a car, you have a title that gives you a government granted monopoly over that hunk of metal.
You don't really "own" most things without society agreeing you do.
In other words, it's a right.
The original idea was to promote creative works by authors by providing a limited term right to be the sole publisher of a work. This was important in the days where it actually cost money to publish and distribute things, as it ensured you wouldn't eat the cost of that only to have someone else make all the money by doing it cheaper.
Thing is, it doesn't cost money to publish and distribute anything anymore. I think the large number of free and fan works that exist are proof enough that creativity need not be incentivized by money, and to the extent that we want to monetarily reward works we find meaningful, there are mechanisms like Patreon or Github sponsorship to do that.
Will the production quality suffer without large corporations spending ludicrous amounts of money? Yeah, probably. But I don't see how that's something worthy of preserving for all the bullshit that copyright inflicts on our culture.
IMO pretty much literally anything else would probably put us in a better situation. At this point after several decades of experience, I think even just outright abolishing copyright law could possibly actually be a net improvement (give or take). But surely it should be possible to come up with a better system by now!
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Even so: to respond to who would create even if copyright law would be abolished:
A lot of people create with the intent of letting everyone instantly get to use their hard work. This is actually rather common. Huge amounts of fan-art, original art, original fiction and original fiction get created every day. Scientific articles get written every day. Wikipedia gets written every day. Open source software gets written every day. And let's not start about AI art and AI text (which currently is all PD) . 90% of this all might be crap, but then 90% of everything is crap. There are definitely gems among the 10%, just like everywhere else. And due to the sheer volume: there are a lot of gems.
Much of this activity would still happen without copyright law. There is clearly sufficient incentive at least. Fun is a common incentive. Sharing back is a common incentive too. Advancing the course of science. Earning fame.
Or you can just earn money. People earn money this way. I earn money this way. In this kind of situation, you pay the bills by "making things that don't exist yet".
Current copyright law has actually often gotten in the way more than that it has helped, I feel. I can tell you stories if you like! This does differ a bit per field and profession, of course.
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But really copyright law should be replaced:
If you actually want to earn money by depending on copyright law, I feel you're getting short-changed at the moment. AI will "steal" your style; youtube, spotify and amazon will pay you mere pennies, of which apple might will pinch a percentage, your publisher will pinch a percentage, and you get left with ... very little.
Copyright frankly isn't helping many people right now. I don't think anyone is happy. Unless you know a bevy of small creators now living in mansions in Beverly Hills? I'd love to hear of it!
Per a google search, it seems that mainly very famous actors, actresses, and generally people who've contributed significantly to our culture live in Beverly Hills. The google results are definitely biased towards celebrities, but Beverly Hills seems to be a very odd example to choose when trying to point out how copyright isn't helping creators. It's natural to expect some proportionality between a creator's audience and the profit the can make monetizing their work.
This is especially true of small creators afaict.
Can you point to examples of any small creators who would be better off if they had no legal copyright over their works?
I think the site rules do imply you're not supposed to go for the straw man argument that ends a debate, but rather for the steel-man argument that stimulates further curious conversation.
So let's go for that then... :
People often build on each other's work. Can you imagine situations where people can take inspiration from each other a whole lot earlier, or are allowed to borrow ideas sooner and more often?
This does happen in eg. open source and open content. More traditionally, scientists also reference each other's papers. Sometimes there's also times like eg. when sampling first became popular: this lead to a period of creative bloom in music.
* "Can you point to examples of any small creators who would be better off if they had no legal copyright over their works?"
to
* "People often build on each other's work. Can you imagine situations where people can take inspiration from each other a whole lot earlier, or are allowed to borrow ideas sooner and more often?",
it's just completely removing the concept of "copyright" from the question entirely and attempting to inject the false premise that "violating a creator's copyright is the same as sparking inspiration in someone else or citing a paper" (which is, itself, a straw man).
Now, I have to take you seriously because the site rules say so. So I will! But I haven't heard a "stealing a car" analogy since last century, so I may be rusty. And maybe you're taking this in a novel direction? Let's see!
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So a trick people did to me in the late '90s was to redefine "to steal" and not tell me. Sorry, but I do have to check for a minute!
In the case where you have allegedly stolen my car: can I walk out of the house next morning half asleep, put my keys in the ignition, and drive the <stolen> car to $customer without noticing much?
If so, then you have redefined "stealing" beyond my Overton Window and I shall be forced to make rude noises at you.
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Otherwise: obviously I want to be able to drive my car. Depriving me of my property is bad. Where do you want to go with this?
edit/note: possibly I'm misremembering and people were still using the "you wouldn't steal a car" argument in the very early 2000s?
And yet, MPAA seriously made an advertising campaign that equated copying to stealing [1] . This obviously didn't go down well. (eg: [2] ). It sounded a bit like what you were saying, hence the odd response you got.
Of course in in reality, copying isn't stealing. If you could somehow copy my car, I'd still have my car, so you wouldn't be depriving me of anything.
In general, people collaborating and building and iterating on each other's work is normally considered a good thing. Originally copyright had fairly short terms to facilitate this, but over time the original aims of copyright seem to have drifted somewhat.
Anyway, I'm still left mostly guessing where you're trying to go with your 'If I steal your car and tell you that I'm just "building on your work" to better my life, are you going to feel the same?' comment. Could you elucidate?
Because creating is part of human nature. Many creators actually enjoy doing what they do.
Now I don't disagree that it is in our interest to make sure that people can afford to create but that doesn't have to mean copyright at all.
Creators can still get paid for their work through Patreon if people find it valuable.