First of all, I would like to appreciate the amount of time and energy you have onvested into a polite and thorough reply. Let me respond in kind.
As much as I don't like the phrase "IP doesn't exist" as it is simplistic and inevitably prone to being misunderstood, I agree with it mostly. IP does kinda exist as a fiction created by governments. Without them, without the monopoly on violence which torces a kind of collective hallucination of IP. it does not exist.
Even though I did not say it directly one can derived it from what I said earlier.
The entire concept of property exists solely to adress issue of scarcity (limited availability of material things) and to allow us to share these limited resources in a non-conflicting manner. For instance, If I want to sit in a chair nobody else can sit in it while I am sitting in it, or if I want to use a piece of land to grow veggies there, it cannot be used for for example building a house. That is why we have the concept of property.
When it comes to IP however, this problem does not exist. Me having the same idea as someone else, does not infringe on him having the idea. Me singing a song somebody else wrote, does not take the song from him. Me making a copy of a movie does not destroy the previous instance of the movie. The sole problem property aims to solve does not exist when it comes to intellectual property.
Also while I am at the fundamental flaws of IP, I must mention, that it inherently and inevitably creates a problem of authorship and ownership that doesn't exist in the physical realm pnve again because of scarcity. If I take some wood and craft a chair out of it, I can prove that it is I who made it and that nobody else has created because nobody else has had thst wood that I crafted it out of. However I can think exactly the same thing as someone else without ever even knowing the other person exists. (as has been nicely illustrated by Jevons and Menger independently coming up with the concept of marginal utility) I can think I created a unique melody while it has been used a thoushand times before by thoushands of other people.
While I am at it, there is the problem of minimal unit of ownership with IP that once again does not exist in the physical realm. What is the smallest unit of information one can claim ownership of? A note? A 3 not melody? Ten words? A letter? Whatever solution you choose, it always creates unexpected artificial problems.
Now to adress your concerns. It is most certain. that current knowledge. progress and technology would have been different if the fiction of IP wasn't forced on us. I don't however think, that it would be worse. I do think. it would be better.
To be honest I do not care much about the current subcategories of IP as I reject the entire concept.
When it comes to the issue of authorship, you don't need IP. You don't need to own a thing to claim authorshipand you can have a system to punish lies. Lie about authorship is still a lie even without IP and can be treated as such. Even without IP and centralized justice/judicial system (decentralized judicatory system is a very hard concept to grasp, don't worry about it too much now) you still can sue people who falsely claim that they have created this or that. You still get to claim authorship without IP. What you cannot claim is ownership of the immaterial resources.
The crucial aspect of the entire IP problem is that enforcing it requires interfering with rights of third parties who never consented to it, who never made any agreements with you. Let me illustrate. I as a (former) musician can create a song. I am the author of the song. I can record it and distribute copies of the recording. I can pair those copy with a license that specifies what my customers can do with it. So far everything is fine and legitimate.
Now imagine, that as it often happens, somebody breaks the license agreement and publishes a copy of my work on Pirate Bay and millions of people download and enjoy my song. Do I have the right to sue the millions of people that downloaded it from Pirate bay? I say no. I don't know those people, we do not have any contract between us, they are a third party completely unrelated to me. Current IP implementstion says yes and I think that's wrong as it makes third parties responsible for things they haven't signed up for. I don't have any right to force unknown people that had no interaction with me or my property.(remember the IP is not property despite it's name)
There are many more problems and rabbit holes without even going into the flaws of contemporary implementation of IP. Let me cut it off here and let me know what you don't agree with and/or where you may need a more detailed explanation.
Also hello from almost neighboring tax farm. (to the northwest of your tax farm)