Party A pays Party B for the time and effort it takes to discover a new useful combination. After that, ideally the combination should be freely shared - "Hey look, we've discovered a new combination that's useful!" but this contradicts the ideologies of the past centuries when rather than duplicating combinations, physical materials had to be constantly arranged to match a template. The process of copying a physical arrangement is expensive. We've been dealing with physical objects for centuries, but digital content is new, and people don't like new things. Thus, they deny the newness and treat it like something they know - they treat combinations of bits like physical objects and try to sell them on a per-copy basis. Making the copy is so inexpensive that the cost is negligible, so the only excuse for not being greedy is to say "We have to pay back Party B for the time and effort he took to discover this useful new combination".
Then there is Party C, who also takes the time and effort it takes to discover a new useful combination, but because a second party is paying them to. They decide that their newly discovered useful combination should be freely available, so that nobody has to pay for the time and effort it takes to discover it nor take the time and effort it takes to discover it themselves. "But wait!" they say, "I did the work chronologically before anyone else! I must be allowed to decide how this combination is used!" Thus, Party C places a different kind of price on the newly discovered useful combination - not one of money, not one of time and effort, but one of restriction of use.
But a vast majority of people are content with not having to spend money or take time and effort themselves, so Party C's idea becomes very popular, contrasted with the now negative view of Party A's actions. "Combinations want to be free!" they say, as they restrict the freedom of the combinations they discovered themselves.
Then there's me. All I see is useful combinations being discovered left and right, and I don't see anything to tie a combination to a discoverer. Oh? What's that? You say that the chronologically first party to find out that a combination is useful has some say in how the combination is used? They own that combination, you say? What nonsense is this!?
You ask my definition of plagiarism? To plagiarize is to take a combination known to be useful and to falsely claim that you discovered the combination. You ask my definition of copyright? Copyright is the concept that some party gets to decide how a combination is used. Sound familiar?
What a bizarre idea. Who could possibly think that they could manage which people know a combination? Combinations are not physical, you can't lock them in a vault and only open the vault for specific people. Digital combinations are immaterial, they are omnipresent, they are pure concept which we attribute some meaning to and find some usefulness in.
It used to be that when you paid for a game, you were paying for three things: the time and effort that people took to discover a useful combination, the process of arranging physical materials into a useful form, and the process of physically moving the physical materials to a convenient location for you.
Now, when you pay for a game, two of those three things don't even need to happen: no physical materials have to be arranged into a useful form, and no process of transporting physical materials needs to occur. So what are you paying for? (I assume you know the obvious answer)
You might be asking me if I think internet access should be free. Well, the cost of internet access depends on what kind of access you have. In every case I can think of, some physical materials have to be arranged in a useful way for you to gain access to the internet: cables (just like electricity), radio/microwave towers, satellites, etc. and on top of that, those physical materials have to be constantly inspected and rearranged back into their fully useful arrangements as the environment they are in arranges them into less useful arrangements.
Thus, there may be a one-time cost to initially gain access, and there will be a continual cost to ensure that the quality of the access does not degrade over time. My only quip is that in many cases these costs should be shared by everyone in an area, thus making the bill cheaper with more people. But I suppose that would make it hard for the service provider to expand, which means you are also paying for the service provider to expand its abilities.
In the end, "accessing" the internet will always have a cost, even though the particular information you are accessing is free.
This is where we get back to infamous Party C. Infamous, you ask? Open source being infamous may seem unfathomable at first, but recall what I have so carefully written so far - or rather, re-observe the useful combinations I have taken the time and effort to discover. What exactly has Party C done?
Party C has attempted to restrict the ways in which combinations may be used. How absurd! This is borderline DRM! In fact, in my book, it is DRM! You read me right: open source software licensing is a form of digital rights management.
As a programmer, it's all around you. See some code on the internet? Sorry, it's either protected by implicit copyright (huh!?), by an open source license (huh!?), or you're not even allowed to be viewing it (huh!?). Even worse, not just combinations of characters can have DRM, but also more abstract things like algorithms and class designs!
It's a miracle that anyone can even learn to program without getting sued, seeing as by now just about every piece of code you write is in some way protected. Absurd! Absolutely, positively, completely illogical. "Oh hi, I see you're getting decent use out of that there combination; it just so happens that I have the rights to that particular combination, and you didn't ask me permission to use that combination. See you in court!"
It's not possible to "steal code". You can go steal physical property like a flash drive, but there's no way to "steal" a combination. It's not physical. Replicating it is free. Transporting it is free. A combination cannot be created or destroyed, only discovered and forgotten.
Thus, I try to make as much of my code as I can available in the public domain (not including a license results in implicit copyright taking hold) via Unlicense. The useful combinations I took the time and effort to discover are now truly free, and no one has to spend money, jump through hoops, or exhaust their own time and effort to get use out of the combinations I discovered.
For most people, this all comes down to where you draw the line. I draw the line such that physical objects have the property of value and digital combinations do not have the property of value. Both, however, have the property of usefulness.
Unfortunately, however, I don't think society will be able to settle the debate on where to draw the line for several generations. The digital world came with the universe but has only recently played a significant role in our individual lives and in the development of society. It's very new to us, and it will take a while for people to figure everything out about it and how it affects us as we explore it.
And on that note, I thank you for taking the time and effort to observe the useful combination that I myself took the time and effort to discover. I hope that this combination was useful enough that it properly conveyed the points I was trying to get across, and I hope that nothing was misinterpreted or misunderstood. Talking about abstract concepts is difficult and tricky!