Our understanding of intellectual property rights hasn't really changed all that much since the very first parents were filed. As long as someone can prove they came up with an idea first or that something was created by them, then it is assumed that person has rights over that thing. If it was just a question of rights, then this would be noble enough. But modern thinking related to intellectual property is typically tied to the rights to make money from the item that has been protected.
But like mentioned above, it's about proof that you were first at that other people support this belief. In addition, it more realistically becomes a question of who can file the appropriate claim first which sort of becomes the default reasoning for proving who was "first" to a particular idea.
But in this social media age that we live in archaic notions of property and ownership translate into weird ideas when it comes to digital content and items shared over social media. Something as simple as a image posted to a social media network may for sharing purposes need to be supported by archaic legal jargon on the backend and can still run into weird situations like photos stolen for contests or designs stolen for shirt designs.
At the end of the day, it feels like the true antagonist creators face may be the very nature of capitalism itself. It's hard to celebrate art and creativity just for the sake of the experience when there are a lot of folks trying to make money off the ideas and creations of others.
At the moment, capitalism is indeed necessary given the general lack of trust humanity has when it comes to other people in general. Since we've yet to reach that enlightened state where people can trust everyone to work for the greater good, it typically boils down to everyone fighting for themselves. Too many are systems, laws and general principles for things are tied to the accumulation of wealth on order to survive in the market economy that we live in and perhaps make things a little easier for our children.
Thus the Star Trek fan in me can't help but hope that Roddenberry's vision of a more utopian future becomes true sooner rather than later. And thus the democratization of the Internet always feels like such a noble thing given how it seems to echo some aspects of the future that Star Trek tries to project. The free exchange of information, the meeting of minds and the intermingling of ideas can lead to a lot of good. But of course such things take time and for now online discussions are better remembered for their vitriol and bile more than anything else.
So what's my point here? It's hard to say off-hand. I don't simply want to bring down the capitalist systems that drive society for now - at least not without a viable alternative based on folks working together for a common cause. Maybe I just want to stress the need for people to trust others more but to also become equally worthy of that trust. Maybe we just need to be nicer to other people for a change. Or maybe privacy notions are antiquated and we need to come up with a new definition for privacy, intellectual property and all that fun stuff. Maybe we just need to lighten up.
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