While I agree wholeheartedly, since the overly-clever invention of copyright that ship has kind of sailed. The vast majority of IP is owner controlled, because a few people hundreds of years ago thought it would be cheaper to just throw things into the court system, rather than deal with taxation, subsidies, and other regulation.

And way back then - when courts where a thing, but a broad tax base was not, and in any case society didn't have the kind of near-instant communication networks available now - that might even have made sense.