The "natural law" argument can be demonstrated in a couple of stories. Years ago there was a very strong copyright on sheet music in the US. (1800s some time) And sheet music was kept very secure. But then competing composers/musicians hired people that could hear the music and write down the sheet music from memory.
(ie, simply expressing or performing an idea and having other people experience it means it can be copied.)
There was another copyright battle in the early US over fonts. To this day you can copy any font Adobe or anyone else makes, because you can't copyright the alphabet. You can only copyright the code that makes the font. You can make identical fonts for every Adobe font legally, and they can look identical as long as your underlying font code is different. Consider the laws on fonts before there was "code" to display a font?
There's stories about coat buttons and other odds things as well. Laurence Lessig gave a talk on the history of copyright a long time ago that is incredibly insightful on this topic. (I can't find that exact talk on Youtube any more) But one point that was interesting is that without copyright laws, originally nothing was copyrighted, but today it's believed/taught that everything is.
Edit: I appreciate your willingness to look into this topic, and I feel I may have come across harshly in my first reply to you. I hope you didn't take it to badly. I am trying to tone down my internet voice.
(ie, simply expressing or performing an idea and having other people experience it means it can be copied.)
There was another copyright battle in the early US over fonts. To this day you can copy any font Adobe or anyone else makes, because you can't copyright the alphabet. You can only copyright the code that makes the font. You can make identical fonts for every Adobe font legally, and they can look identical as long as your underlying font code is different. Consider the laws on fonts before there was "code" to display a font?
There's stories about coat buttons and other odds things as well. Laurence Lessig gave a talk on the history of copyright a long time ago that is incredibly insightful on this topic. (I can't find that exact talk on Youtube any more) But one point that was interesting is that without copyright laws, originally nothing was copyrighted, but today it's believed/taught that everything is.
Edit: I appreciate your willingness to look into this topic, and I feel I may have come across harshly in my first reply to you. I hope you didn't take it to badly. I am trying to tone down my internet voice.