Intellectual property is a total mess. IP has tumbled, stumbled and bumbled to its current state by way of haphazard precedents and half assed legislation. To

Intellectual property is a total mess. IP has tumbled, stumbled and bumbled to its current state by way of haphazard precedents and half assed legislation. To the extent that it's intentionally tweaked (designed is too strong a word), it's adapted to protect high value industry or companies. What we're left with makes no sense. Concepts like freedom of expression, the public domain, rights of artists and such have a part in IP's history, and rhetoric... but I can't think of any legislation, reform or regulatory/enforcement actions that actually set out to defend these. I don't know if there's a one paragraph solution, but IP is central to a lot of centralisation phenomenon one way or another. The economic and legal dynamics of copyright, for example, centralize control over music revenues and often discovery. That's spotify now. It was record companies at one point. The first step in any commercial music endeavor, before a single note is played, is to separate artists from control and ownership of the music. What the hell is the public benefit of giving social media sites these rights over content? If we accept T&C click throughs as valid contracts, the whole concept of determining content usage rights by agreement is absurd in practice.