I'm not sure how to prove a self evidence fact of the world.
Hint: if it was self-evident, then all reasonable men would agree with it. Not only do I disagree with it, but so do a large faction of literary academics like Kembrew McLeod as well as people before the rise of Hobbesian Individualism. That's a sign that it isn't self-evident.
Except that... that is what copyright laws are premised on, controlling the expression of ideas by society. Do you reject that society, rather than direct individual control, is an acceptable avenue of asserting control? For someone raging against enlightenment idealism, you appear to be leaning into enlightenment individualism quite heavily here. We accept societal restrictions on personal actions for all manner of things because we believe that it leads to better societal results.
No, it is not "society" that controls the expression of ideas under intellectual property law. If intellectual property is property, then it is the IP holder that is the controller of these expressions, and he delegates the state to uphold his right as a part of the common good. But more on that later.
Now, I understand that there may be some ambiguity to how the word "control" is being used here, so let me be clear: "control" as I am using it is similar to the control one could have if one has intellect and will. In other words, I control things if I can use them as an extension of my will. Human beings are the sort of creatures that can do this because they have free will. An animal cannot do this because they have no free will, only brute appetite dictated by physical law. My thoughts, my actions, and the products of human thought and action are all things I control this way.
Now, because thoughts are immaterial things, we can't buy and sell them like we can material things. Furthermore, there are my thoughts about something and there are your thoughts about a story. The only thing that unites them is that they are about the same concept, namely the story. But the story itself isn't a thought. It's a universal, an idea. So you don't have ownership over my thoughts about a story just because you came to think about that story first anymore than you could claim ownership of all particular apples just because you grew the first apple tree in history (say).
To understand where this is going wrong, let us establish the purpose of the state. The state could only enforce something if it's in the interest of the common good, because that is the only good in which we all share. As an Aristotelian, I hold that the only candidate for the common good would be the common virtuous social order. Upholding that is the purpose of the state. Now, the state does control what I do with my property and my body because it has this right. And defending property rights on behalf of individual property owners is a part of this because part of upholding a virtuous social order is defending justice. But the state is not the determiner of who gets what. That's a job for natural law, which is prior to the state ontologically speaking.
1. Creation of 'original property.'
Nice question-begging. That Mickey Mouse is "original" is exactly what we're arguing over. I say it isn't, and I have good reason to say it isn't. You say it is because "Mickey Mouse didn't exist before Disney came up with him." Well, yes, but Walt Disney didn't create the Mouse in a vacuum. Mickey Mouse is a combination of differing concepts Disney connected together, and this does not suffice to show him to be the owner.
To show what's wrong with the "creation" argument, I'll quote
Stephan Kinsella's Against Intellectual Property:
One problem with the creation-based approach is that it almost invariably protects only certain types of creations— unless, that is, every single useful idea one comes up with is subject to ownership (more on this below). But the distinction between the protectable and the unprotectable is necessarily arbitrary. For example, philosophical or mathematical or scientific truths cannot be protected under current law on the grounds that commerce and social intercourse would grind to a halt were every new phrase, philosophical truth, and the like considered the exclusive property of its creator. For this reason, patents can be obtained only for so-called “practical applications” of ideas, but not for more abstract or theoretical ideas. Rand agrees with this disparate treatment, in attempting to distinguish between an unpatentable discovery and a patentable invention. She argues that a “scientific or philosophical discovery, which identifies a law of nature, a principle or a fact of reality not previously known” is not created by the discoverer.
But the distinction between creation and discovery is not clearcut or rigorous. Nor is it clear why such a distinction, even if clear, is ethically relevant in defining property rights. No one creates matter; they just manipulate and grapple with it according to physical laws. In this sense, no one really creates anything. They merely rearrange matter into new arrangements and patterns. An engineer who invents a new mousetrap has rearranged existing parts to provide a function not previously performed. Others who learn of this new arrangement can now also make an improved mousetrap. Yet the mousetrap merely follows laws of nature. The inventor did not invent the matter out of which the mousetrap is made, nor the facts and laws exploited to make it work.
In other words, if Disney can own Mickey, why can't Einstein own E=MC^2? I hold there's no distinction to be made between the two, yet IP advocates never consider having Einstein own E=MC^2. Now given the inherent intertextuality of cultural works, I hold that
everything written is like Mickey Mouse, and I see no evidence against this basic empirical observation. Therefore, your argument fails.
2. The existence of debased derivative works is not evidence of a lack of great art.
Strawman argument. I never said that "the existence of debased derivative works is not evidence of a lack of great art, and neither does the culture industry theory's original formulation. In fact, let me quote the Wikipedia:
The term
culture industry (
German:
Kulturindustrie) was coined by the
critical theorists Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) and
Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), and was presented as critical vocabulary in the chapter "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception", of the book
Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), wherein they proposed that
popular culture is akin to a factory producing standardized cultural goods—
films,
radio programmes,
magazines, etc.—that are used to manipulate
mass society into passivity. Consumption of the easy pleasures of popular culture, made available by the
mass communications media, renders people docile and content, no matter how difficult their
economic circumstances. The inherent danger of the culture industry is the cultivation of false psychological
needs that can only be met and satisfied by the products of
capitalism; thus Adorno and Horkheimer especially perceived
mass-produced culture as dangerous to the more technically and intellectually difficult
high arts. In contrast, true psychological needs are
freedom,
creativity, and genuine
happiness, which refer to an earlier demarcation of human needs, established by
Herbert Marcuse. (See
Eros and Civilization, 1955).
Now, I wouldn't endorse everything that the critical theorists say about the Culture Industry. Contra Marx, I see commodification as the outcome of a modern, degenerate view of property rights as opposed to the outcome of property rights as such. Thus, my view of the culture industry, which is based on Marxist commodification, differs as well. But notice how the mechanism that endangers high arts isn't the production of more cheap crap, but the systematic way high arts and other intellectually stimulating activities become disincentivized by consumerism (aka the "cultivation of false psychological needs").
You're increasingly coming across as someone who is so absorbed in reading up on particular philosophers and philosophies, that you're actually blind to the world around you.
This coming from the guy who doesn't even pay attention to my arguments.