Intellectual property is property. And there are rules about what constitutes it (see Oracle vs. Google for interesting examples).
Now, general ideas don't fit the bill. Lyft and Uber don't infringe on each other just because they're both ride sharing services. Same with Coke and Pepsi, or any of the other products and services that compete with each other. No, what counts are assets (graphics, music, etc) and proprietary means of production (chemical formulas, recipes, non-open source code).
If I make an awesome game, it's totally okay for another person to make something similar (see: PUBG and Fortnite's new arena mode). What's not okay is if they steal (or perfectly recreate) my game's assets, or if they steal my code.
It has nothing to do with censorship, but rather with theft. Not everything is open source, and not everything should be.
Now, general ideas don't fit the bill. Lyft and Uber don't infringe on each other just because they're both ride sharing services. Same with Coke and Pepsi, or any of the other products and services that compete with each other. No, what counts are assets (graphics, music, etc) and proprietary means of production (chemical formulas, recipes, non-open source code).
If I make an awesome game, it's totally okay for another person to make something similar (see: PUBG and Fortnite's new arena mode). What's not okay is if they steal (or perfectly recreate) my game's assets, or if they steal my code.
It has nothing to do with censorship, but rather with theft. Not everything is open source, and not everything should be.
