That's a very interesting, and strong way to view it — however, I feel like this is still not going to solve the main issue: Yes, my intellect is my property,

That's a very interesting, and strong way to view it — however, I feel like this is still not going to solve the main issue: Yes, my intellect is my property, and it's going to stay that way. But my intellect needs to feed on — artifacts. If I see something I find interesting, I want to see how it's done. Not for the purpose of copying it, and appropriating it, but for the purpose of learning from it; feeding my intellect is the way I can keep it alive. I cannot generate new, novel artifacts, without old ones to feed my curiosity, and my ability. Here's the thing: the companies want to own those artifacts, and I want to freely peruse them. It would be one thing to just be able to rent them from companies, but in the case of closed source, that is not possible. Intellectual artifacts become inaccessible.