Comment by michaelmrose

Well what normally happens when something new clearly doesn't exactly fit within existing laws and practices is a bunch of rich people consider whether there is more money to be made if its legal and if it is they give some portion of the money they expect to make in the first year to lawmakers, sometimes in the form of gold bars, and it becomes legal.

Sarcasm aside there is no moral right to ANY intellectual property. It's not a positive expression of a natural right its a negative imposition of restriction upon everyone else. It's a statement that if I take my pen and paper and write the same words that you now own my pen my paper and my labor. It adds friction to the distribution of knowledge, impoverishes the world, keeps some knowledge that might have come into being from ever being generated for lack of the knowledge that failed to travel and all the good that could have therefore been done, undone.

It is justifiable only if the minimal restrictions we are willing to impose on net supports the creation of works that enrich society more than the restrictions impoverish it.

I'm not sure you can effectively measure it and would as soon just see IP law excepting only part of trademark law to prevent fraudulent knock offs and scams go entirely down the crapper.