Very well done, Luke! IP is an extremely sticky subject, mostly because, as you point out, we tend to only look at it from a perspective involving State actions.
I think Steemit is a living, breathing example of how protecting IP without the State is possible. People generally value original content creators. And we're seeing how they respond to plagiarism, amazingly without any guns or laws involved.
My fiancee, @missjessica, had a post plagiarized a few weeks back. @dragonslayer109 and @gavvet featured the fake post in their original article that day. The community responded, informed him of the mistake, he fixed it immediately, the faker got flagged, and I haven't seen them since. If people are willing to do that for us, this early on, I am confident this behavior will only flourish in the future.
https://steemit.com/life/@gavvet/daily-pick-of-hidden-gems-10-featuring-dragonslayer109-as-author
Thanks Derek.
As long as bad actors aren't rewarded. Sometimes they slip through and are rewarded which will only increase the number of bad actors here. Already, it's quite difficult to keep up with because many seem to not really care, unfortunately.