What is a "natural right" and who decided it applies to physical property but not ideas? And why is the "natural right" based on the ease of copying something, rather than the word work necessary to bring that thing into existence in the first place? To me, it just seems like you're using the concept as a "because I say so" distinction.
The go-to for people who oppose a moral basis for copyright is the ease of copying intangible versus physical goods, but to me it's a nonsense argument. The ease of copying goes to the enforceability of any monopoly on a thing--it does not go to determining the justification for granting a monopoly on a thing to begin with.
I think you actually understand the philosophical basis of property and why it doesn't apply to ideas better than you're letting on here, but I'll answer this anyway.
Ownership of physical property is natural because physical property is inherently rivalrous and excludable — if you take my hammer, I can't use it, and thus I need to keep my hammer in my shed if I want to have access to it when I need it. Ownership makes natural sense there. It's essential to security.
Ideas are not the same way. Any number of people can think an idea, and in fact an idea becomes just as much a part of everyone who thinks it as the first person who thought it, and you literally can't take an idea back once you have shared it. Ideas are not just easy to copy, they aren't even entities that need copying. The mind is constantly taking in and assimilating ideas and creating its own.
I'm not actually against copyright. I think there is a sound moral basis for it, in that otherwise an increasing number of people wouldn't be able to enjoy the fruits of their labor. I just don't think there is a moral justification for the tortured concept of eternal copyright. Eventually, any successful idea will become so diffused throughout society that it's just an utter farce to pretend it is not part of the commons.
If nothing else, infinitely decreasing the number of ideas that may be legally had is so harmful to society that it outweighs any good that could possibly come from it. In other words, even if we say "Sure, let's pretend treating ideas as property is a natural fit," the Lockean Proviso warns us against allowing them to remain property forever.
> I think you actually understand the philosophical basis of property and why it doesn't apply to ideas better than you're letting on here, but I'll answer this anyway.
> Ownership of physical property is natural because physical property is inherently rivalrous and excludable
While that's one philosophical justification for property, we've had property long before anyone coined the phrases "rivalrous" or "excludable" and it has been justified for reasons that have nothing to do with those economic concepts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_property. Going back further, see Psalm 128:2 ("For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee.")
Indeed, and I even referred to the labor justification later on (i.e. copyright is a good thing because creators are entitled to the fruits of their labor). But it's still an unnatural fit, because unlike things that the labor theory of property has traditionally been applied to, ideas are inherently shared, or I suppose you could say created in the head of each person exposed to them. To claim ownership over other people's minds is far, far beyond anything John Locke or King David ever contemplated.
Ideas are just inherently unlike physical property on a very fundamental level. If my neighbor lends me his hammer, I can give it back. If my neighbor lends me an idea, it never left him, but I still can't ever rid myself of it.
No matter how much I care about content creators being compensated fairly — and I do, both for philosophical and selfish reasons — it is a farce to pretend an idea that exists in everyone's heads and originated in none of them is the exclusive property of one person. It is simply unnatural in a way that physical property isn't.
> I suppose you could say created in the head of each person exposed to them.
I created Harry Potter, not J.K. Rowlings? My labor in reading the novels is equal to her labor in writing them?
I think that argument falls flat particularly with copyright because there is no copyright liability in the face of independent creation. Copyright doesn't prevent anyone from owning their original ideas, even if other people independently think of the same idea.
So with that hammer you build products that you might sell and I might want to buy with my money that I got from selling my idea. But if you 'take' my idea I will have to get a new hammer just the same. There are infinitely many hammers as there are infinitely many ideas, but getting new one takes nontrivial amount of effort for both cases. The fact that one is tangible is in my opinion an arbitrary property for the purpose of this discussion.
The go-to for people who oppose a moral basis for copyright is the ease of copying intangible versus physical goods, but to me it's a nonsense argument. The ease of copying goes to the enforceability of any monopoly on a thing--it does not go to determining the justification for granting a monopoly on a thing to begin with.