It's an interesting debate. One more thing they did was prove there was a market for the idea.

I think we should severely limit copyrights and patents, but not get rid of them entirely.

Or they're just ideas.

That is the whole point of copyright/patent law. Society benefits by having interesting ideas brought to market, and society misses/looses out when people who bring ideas to market are punished by copycats, stopping new ideas/innovation.

You wouldn't have had an industrial revolution without copyright/patent laws.

In the modern world where we have done most of the low hanging fruit a new novel idea could be even more valuable for society to protect.