1. Ideas as a secret. You can create scarcity at the initial step of sharing. You can even create monopolies at this step. The framework for this is NDAs. The vital difference here is that once broadcast an idea can no longer be exploited by the author. And once shared with a third party, repeated use can not be controlled. 2. Authorship as attribution. This is done by preventing plagiarism.
Replacing IP law with NDA contract law and attribution protection would still allow selling software but not subscriptions for software you run locally. Also it would allow everone to record radio broadcasts, which is illegal now but was never enforced.
I strongly believe the initial sharing of an idea/software/music/etc. Is the right step to create scarcity. Once something is provided to the public, the public should be able to use it in any way as long as attribution is preserved.
That sounds like a take on the discussion about the 'social contract': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
I think that both positions are valid. That it is, it's fair to dismiss giving a part of your freedom towards a coercive state. But at the same time, you also forfait the future possibility that you might want to exert exclusive rights over your own intellectual work.
It totally works out if that's a decision made on a personal level. But when you expand that towards a first principle that applies to everyone, you run into issues. After all, authors relinquish control over who gets to use their work and how it gets to be used. And not all contexts in which one's creative work is consumed are equal.
This would range from opposing the use of one's music during political manifestations, to opposing the use of one's code in both private and public ventures which are ethically questionable.
When it comes to software, you can see this in efforts to create copyleft licenses with extra terms & conditions that restrict the use of how software is used. For instance, the Hippocratic License. [1]
[1] https://firstdonoharm.dev/
The net result is a contract with an inherent tension between giving as much freedom as possible and being aware of the consequences and ethical considerations of doing so to the point that intellectual property rights are exerted to enforce "desired behaviour" on the part of the licensee.
Removing copyright as a principle entirely removes the option to create such uneasy solutions, but at the same time, it also gives absolute freedom to re-purpose creative works in ways which are - arguably - counter to the interests of the public.
I think it's just a manner of speaking. In order to create this protection, you have to elevate ideas to some kind of property by creating an artificial scarcity. Or at least, that's the result produced by a system of intellectual property. That artificial scarcity, introduced by a coercive state, is what I'm opposed to.
> The real problem with copyright, though, isn't making that first claim. It's the abstract notion that rights to claim IP can be extended and transferred. Which creates a very different can of worms.
Yes, removing the latter while keeping the former would be a HUGE improvement on the status quo I think. But I still see the former as problematic. :-)