encomiast

Users with over 25,000 reputation can see site analytics that include charts that look a lot like these. https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/site-analytics

I like that there's some competition in this space. I wish it was someone else because I will never have a Facebook-controlled app on any of my devices again. I simply don't trust them. If it's available on the web and it gains traction, maybe I will use it.

Fair points.

The idea of copyright predates the United States. The English ‘Statute of Anne’ of 1710 is typically cited as the first modern expression.

“it was made up to support and safeguard author’s living”. That’s not really true. It least in the US, its stated purpose is to promote the useful arts and sciences. Incentivizing authors is a means to that end. If incentivizing corporations achieves those ends as well, it would seem to be consistent with the original purpose. Of course, there are probably valid arguments that corporate ownership of IP doesn’t always promote the useful arts and sciences (for example patent trolls).

My point is that you are picking and choosing which parts of nature you value. The idea of "having", of ownership, is not natural. Many people like Locke have tried to connect it nature, but with limited success — it's still a human construct. In the natural world ownership is defended purely by force or guile. So you are taking this idea of ownership, protected by human constructs of law, and then adding a caveat that it only applies to physical objects. But that's not a natural consequence of the idea of ownership. We make up laws based on the outcomes we desire. One of those outcomes, to promote the progress of science and useful arts, is explicitly called out in the US Constitution. Maybe you don't think promoting those things are important, or maybe you don't think copyright is effective at doing that, but you are not making that argument. You are making some novel, unsupportable argument about natural law and physics that frankly doesn't stand up to any sort of rigorous argument.

Sure, and also I am bigger and stronger than you. Therefore I take your physical object and you can't stop me. That's natural in the sense that it follows from natural law (physics). Natural laws are brutish and don't support the kind of society that most of us want to live in.

"Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct"

So, what laws and constructs of civilized life are not an unnatural made up constructs? You seem to be suggesting there is some natural law that excludes things like intellectual property. Which natural laws, specifically, are you talking about?

I disagree that Bach is simple (I'm not sure what pure means in this context). Bach wrote contrapuntal music. This means you can have two, three, four, or five independent voices that sum up to a whole while maintaining their individual lines. He also included techniques like inversions and retrogrades where the same lines occur backwards or upside down. And he included a great deal of symbolism and numerology in the music. The music is also, at times, very harmonically modern for his time. His music is often wildly virtuosic too — try playing the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue — it is a showpiece. "Simple" is just the wrong word.

FWIW places like 18F are frequently hiring engineers, product people, and designers, the pay is similar, the work is related, and they are 100% remote.

You are being pretty shifty here. You were talking about laws congress passes, but now you are talking about precedent, which is something that happens in courts (the judicial branch). I'm getting the sense that you are a little mixup up on your civics.

Congress does not pass regulations, they pass acts of law. The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) is a codification of the general and permanent rules published in the Federal Register by the executive departments and agencies of the federal government.