alt Hacker NewsCulture may belong to people, but intellectual property like source code doesn't. It's protected by NDAs for the express fact that it doesn't become part of what the people have. Copies of the game have been released for people to play to directly experience the game.
>unnatural legal fiction
It is extremely natural for someone to have ownership over what one has created. If you make a beautifully designed pendant someone can't just steal it from you and claim that they are "archiving it" and want to experience culture.
> Culture may belong to people, but intellectual property like source code doesn't.
> It is extremely natural for someone to have ownership over what one has created.
Intelectual property is an oxymoron, and no oxymoron can be natural. Only scarce things can be property. Making non-scarce things (e.g. binary code) act as property is conflict-seeking behavior that often results in the violation of real ownership of others.
> It's protected by NDAs for the express fact that it doesn't become part of what the people have.
NDA do not protect IPs. While they restrict the flow of information, they are still contracts, and bounded by their limits as such.
> If you make a beautifully designed pendant someone can't just steal it from you and claim that they are "archiving it" and want to experience culture.
Yes, someone can "steal" (copy) my beatiful design on the basis that they own their own pendant materials. To prevent that is to violate their private property rights and, in some cases, their right to live.