No One Is in Charge at the US Copyright Office

That's why I'm not an anti-copyright extremist. I've seen enough examples where the best implementation does not in fact win, but merely the one that put the most money into shoving it into people's eyeballs. Or the most money into scaling up production from a small business' idea.

The rich will still abuse it, but copyright gives smaller creators some channel to fight back with. It's another means to prevent the rich from getting richer without compensating those who helped get them there. It's basically what powers places like YCombinator; Why would someone pay for your pitch instead of hearing it and going to shop for the lowest bidder to implement it?

>Otherwise, everyone loses out so that one individual can artificially collect rent through a government-enforced monopoly.

copyright isn't on ideas, it's on implementation. And experience also tells me there's dozens of ways to skin a sheep. Especially in an industry like tech. You try to rest on your laurels protecting your idea, and someone else will just improve on the idea with a new one.

There can be a few BS copyrighted ideas, but for the most part you are only copyrighting a very small part of how something works. Not the very idea of making a rounded square phone.