That's why the future, sadly, probably won't happen in the US: http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?s=gongkai
Looking across history the pattern seems to be that the nation rise the fastest when they ignore copyright and patents, and then stagnates as those concepts take hold and choke the economy with legalese.
For example Germany (thought not the nation we know it today) introduced the concept later than its neighbors in Europe, and this may have helped in their industrialization as science and engineering texts etc were cheap and easy to acquire.
First the "pioneering" phase, aka land grabbing, then the walled gardens.