Who Owns a Viral Dance?

I'm going to come down on the "nobody" side. If I invent a dance, and do it, that's good. Our culture is richer. If someone else performs that dance, that does not keep me from dancing the exact same way I did before - our culture is even richer than it was, and nothing is removed from me, I am prevented from doing nothing that I could do before.

This situation is really different from that of physical property, where if someone decides to farm my land, I am prevented from farming it, those crops are denied to me, and given to the usurper. Or pick your example, like someone uses my oxcart, I'm prevented from using it, my crops go unhauled to market.

Further, enforcing some kind of faux-ownership requires the resources of the state to enforce. No other entity, certainly not the "owner" of the dance, has enough eyes to see all the possible places the dance could be performed. Why should all of us, through taxes, pay to have our culture locked away?

Nobody owns words, dances, numbers, or sequences of bits.

The fact that a kludge invented by congress to prop up a commercial industry a hundred years ago has so tainted our worldview to view everything as property with associated rights to be enforced against others is troubling.

You can’t own the exclusive rights to someone else moving a certain way.