Some additional thoughts. Artificial “properties” like copyright and patent made it very difficult for a common network protocol and physical layer to emerge from the private sector. Even though the theory is that “intellectual property” helps R&D, it actually harms it because costs and risks are concentrated and duplicated instead of spread out while technologies are intentionally fragmented to differentiate from competitors. IMHO, these false properties create distortions that put a lot of pressure to have R&D done in the public sector where it wouldn’t otherwise be desirable or acceptable. Notice how with Linux and open-source where once the GPL undid a lof of the damage caused by copyright – private sector R&D almost completely took over.