[noonespecial]

The problem is that there really isn't a good analogy for this. Its not the menu, or the counter. Its more like going up the the counter, reading the menu, placing the order, going into the restaurant, there being a restaurant in the first place, etc. It regresses away from you as fast as you can analogize until you end up at machine code clicked in with binary switches and some nitwit telling you he "owns" the op-codes.

Some ideas in computing are just hard to put into real world analogies. This is one of those ideas. Trying to apply some sort of IP law to it is just a plain bad idea. People who code know this instinctively, people who don't are just going to have to trust the people who do, or switch the damn things off altogether.