Copyrighting HTML? I no sink so.

Here's a brainteaser for you:

Writers string words together to create sentences, paragraphs, and stories. We call this "writing". It's considered an art form to choose words in a particular order to achieve a unique meaning, and we've built an entire legal structure to prevent others from passing off someone's word choices as their own. We call this "plagiarism".

Programmers string code together to create phrases, arrays, and software. We call this "programming". While not an art form per se, it's still considered artistic to choose code in a particular order to achieve a unique meaning, and we also have an entire legal structure to prevent others from passing off someone's programming choices as their own. We call this "stealing intellectual property".

However, programmers also string HTML code together for web sites, and that HTML code is downloaded right onto a user's computer... meaning anyone can easily view the web page's HTML source code and cobble it together to create their own web page, altering it enough to keep the casual user from noticing the HTML is the same. In fact, if someone really wanted to, they could copy all the HTML code from the 10 most popular web sites and form a completely new web site using little, if any, code of their own. And if they stripped all the HTML of any references to the original author, it would be no different than plagiarism, except the content is programming instead of writing, and it resides on a web site instead of in a software program.

If a writer were to do something equivalent by copying writing from 10 different authors and removing any reference to them, that writer would immediately be sued for plagiarism and slapped with a massive legal action. But programmers do exactly that all the time without fear of any retribution... because all programmers do it. And because everyone does it, it's not considered plagiarism—it's called "reverse engineering". Pervasiveness has leveled the playing field: when everyone can steal, everyone will steal, but they won't call it stealing... they'll call it sharing.

And that's why no programmer, regardless of how artistic their coding is, will ever receive residuals from writing HTML—how can you claim ownership over something in the digital domain when you can no longer realistically protect how it is distributed?