Who Owns Ideas? -- Historical input please (Score 1)

Well it's about time authorship was brought into question.

Journalists, like Mr. Katz, write about other people's work and thoughts. Musicians do listen to music. Things tend to follow a time-line of development which we call things like genres, themes, memes. It may be that the "physical copy" point that becomes commonly acknowledged as "original work" and thereby constitue ownership is actually changing. Culturally, we're very big on seeing things in terms of ownership, not stewardship, or open-source. Does anyone know the historical work on this item of psychology/cognitive science? This could be helpful.

Remember how long Homer was thought to be the author of the Ilaid. It was ground-breaking [and heavily disputed] when the case was made that he was a repeating bard.