One should consider the idea of "intellectual property" under the premise of this lamplight metaphor. "Stealing" ideas doesn't make anybody poorer after all, a

One should consider the idea of "intellectual property" under the premise of this lamplight metaphor. "Stealing" ideas doesn't make anybody poorer after all, as you can't "steal" an idea in the same sense as you can't "steal" lamplight. Whereas being able to base own ideas on the prior ideas of others benefits usually the whole society sooner or later. That's one of the reasons why inventing writing enabled such a huge step in human development: It made passing forward ideas to others much more efficient. On the contrary just imagine a world in which someone would have claimed "intellectual property" on the idea of writing, and would have tried to prosecute "illegal" usages of written texts, and that claim would have been enforced by authorities. In such a world human progression would be obviously crippled substantially. Information in general doesn't get "used up" by being processed. As lamplight doesn't get less when shared. Ideas aren't a capitalistic asset as they get more valuable when shared by more people! It's long overdue to draw consequences from that fact. For the benefit of our whole species.