AnyOldName3

The justification for patents is that after a (relatively) short period of being under patent, because patents have to disclose how inventions work, the idea isn’t secret and anyone can use it. The patent system is the whole reason why companies don’t and can’t hide their inventions anymore. If we just got rid of the patent system wholesale, they’d go back to keeping things secret. That might be a big problem, or it might mean that, because anything that’s been reverse-engineered would be fair game, more things end up available sooner, depending on whether companies can obfuscate things well enough that it takes longer for a hobbyist to figure out than the patent would have to expire.

Technically it’s just that particular English translation that’s copyrighted. The original text is public domain.

Even then, it’s still not a particularly democratic democracy, e.g. disallowing felons from voting means people experiencing problems with the current law have no power to change it. When a citizen’s right to vote is conditional, suffrage is not universal.