Its a pretty "communist" and anarcistic way of lack of and respect for intellectual ownership , transfer of such you show here . Not at least the way of normal business is handled.
Distribution of those rights is a way of the value chain out to the consumer. By giving more people a way of living by giving moe people more to trade. Its not that hard to grasp, is it??
The problem is the stark contrast between how things are supposed to be "in the spirit of the law", and how they are used/treated in reality. If there is a thing like intellectual property, it can only really be the property of the one who actually used her/his intellectual power to come up with it. And it can not be exclusive to that person either, since others would come up with the same idea. In reality, however, that "property" usually belongs to the company that the creator works for, at least that is how it is usually handled.
It's funny to see how people who criticize the current situation are rather quickly accused of having communist and/or anarchistic viewpoints. Just because something is the current status quo does not mean that it is right, in the grand scheme of things.
The next big difference is in patents, especially software patents. While the original idea was to grant some time-limited monopoly right (and thus protection) to the inventor, it is nowdays mostly used as a weapon against competitors. Just look at the abysmal quality of software patents. They are nothing more than a perversion of what patents (and the patent system) should be. Gross overgeneralizations, no details about the implementation, etc. Compare them to hardware/electronics patents, and the difference is shocking.
It continues with the IP rights in the media industry, which are nothing short of abusing customers nowdays. Then, just look at the agreements that software companies want to use. More often than not they contain gross violations of (not only) consumer protection laws.
Don't get me wrong. If someone comes up with something, that person should profit from it. But the way things are handled nowdays is totally out of control. Thanks to the lobbying power and money that corporations can spend on influencing politics.
Also, speaking of "fairness", a word that came up in this thread regarding the general topic, take a look at this video:
http://www.upworthy.com/9-out-of-10-americans-are-completely-wrong-about-this-mind-blowing-fact-2I'm pretty sure that the situation is not that much different in other "western/civilized" countries. One has to wonder how it came to that point, and stuff like IP laws play quite some role in that, i think. Also, fairness and ethics (or better: lack thereof when it comes to corporations) are a big factor in this.
Greetings,
Chris