Originally Posted by
Xaqaria
The belief that anyone owns their ideas is absurd. The only ideas that you can claim as your own are the ones that you never express to anyone. The very act of communication is giving ideas to other people to use as they wish. Every musician 'steals' ideas from other musicians to make their own music. Every artist 'steals' concepts from other artists, from the world around them. Every thought in your brain is a combination of thoughts that you have 'stolen' from somewhere else. If someone is an artist, they don't need to try to protect their ideas from spreading to other people without their consent because it is in their best interest for those ideas to spread as far and wide as possible. They don't need to worry about other people making money off their ideas because people will be clamoring to pay them for their next one; the one that can't be stolen because it hasn't been communicated yet.
The only people that are worried about ideas spreading without their consent are those people that have paid an artist to express an idea and therefore think that they are the new "owners" of said idea. They don't have the power to create new ideas and so they have to try to squeeze old ones for everything they are worth. This is a useless venture. Once you release an idea into the wild, it defies private ownership by its very existence.