So, while there is a case for limited (a word which should have meaning) government-granted monopolies on products of the mind, they just don't have the same standing as rights which, if not natural to being a human, have a longer tradition than modern national governments. The word "natural" has meaning at least in terms of precedence, if not bloody in tooth and claw nature itself.
In other words, we could claim and defend a right to our lives and property and freedom to move about long before we could claim such a right to our thoughts as recorded somehow. We had to wait for government granted monopolies for the latter.
Finally, government itself holds copyright away from other rights. It's an experiment. It doesn't claim to be protecting such a right as a basis for legitimacy, but granting a limited protection. It's the difference between acquiring legitimacy and using it.
When you make a creative work, you own that work. This is a human right. It is yours. If you never show it to anyone, then they can't copy it. So in a way, you have the same monopoly in a trivial sense.
Let's say you have an apple and you eat it. I happen to have an apple to and watching you eat it I think, "That looks delicious. I'm going to eat my apple too". It's my apple. I'm allowed to eat it. I'm allowed to copy your action. It's a basic freedom that I enjoy.
Now imagine that you had a monopoly on eating apples. Well, that's pretty horrible for the world. Even if you were the very first person to think of eating an apple, it would be terrible for us to give you a monopoly on eating apples. There are lots of apples. I'm not depriving you of your human right to own apples (or eat them if you choose). Just because you happened to think of it first is no reason to deprive others.
The important thing is: you have no human right to stop others from eating apples. Even if nobody had thought of it before, your human rights only go as far as yourself and the things in your possession. Similarly, even if I was hungry, I have no human right to force you to show me how to eat an apple. It's your apple. It's your body. You can do what you like.
Let's say you have a piece of canvas and some paint. You paint a picture of an apple on your canvas. I think, "Hey, that's pretty cool". I happen to have a canvas and some paint. They are my canvas and paint and I can do what I want with them.... except paint a picture of an apple that looks like your picture. Because you have a monopoly on painting pictures that look like that.
This is almost as terrible as giving a monopoly on eating apples. However, as a society we have decided that we want to encourage innovative apple painting. So even though it is kind of strange, we grant a limited monopoly to anyone who paints an apple that looks different than apples that anybody else has painted previously.
So instead of a human right, what we've done is get together as a society to say, "Apple painting is an important part of our culture and we like to see new apple paintings. It is boring to see the same picture over and over again." We all agree (collectively, through our society) to abstain from copying other people's apple paintings for a certain period of time.
Now, do we have the right as a society to force you to divulge any new apple paintings you might draw? If there is a sudden famine and the only food we have are apples, do we have the right to force you to show us how to eat apples? I am not an expert in these fields, but I suspect that these examples would infringe on human rights, even if it would help society as a whole.
I hope that makes the issue more clear.
I disagree with that. To the extent that any rights are "natural" or "human" (as opposed to all rights being creations of the government), I think copyright is entitled to that status more so than say rights in land. My back yard is something that was here before I was born and will be here after I die. I had nothing to do with its creation, and I just bought it from somebody who bought it from somebody who stole it from the Indians. How on earth do I have a greater, more fundamental, right to that than to something I created out of non-existence?
If you build a business, you build it on the back of government-educated workers commuting on government-built roads, etc. "You didn't build that" and whatnot. But we consider you to have a moral entitlement to own and control your business, without assuming society has any special right to it other than universal obligations like paying taxes. But creative works--while they are influenced by society to a degree--are to a much greater extent singular products of creation. But you want to say you don't have a moral entitlement to it?