Should we be tracking down the descendents of ancient Greek or Chinese manuscripts to pay them royalties? After all, we shamelessly stole their works and made them our own. Should peoples of European, Asian, African, etc. descent be backing our bags and returning to our homelands? After all, we shamelessly stole their land and made it our own.

At the end of the day, there is no such thing as absolute property rights. We lose track of who owns what. Sometimes we just take what we want. In a sense, copyright laws acknowledge that. Actually, in the case of some nations, copyright goes beyond acknowledging that and suggest that sometimes things have to be turned over to society for the public good.

I, for one, would not want to live in a world of absolute ownership. I would also hate to live in a world where no one owns anything. Both extremes have their faults, so some sort of compromise has to be found.