I'm not siding with Ian here, but he did say numerous times that it was based on L. Neil's covenant. It has only been minutely altered, point one of the thing says that every man is entitled to the fruits of his labor, so how should one proceed in a case where L. Neil put this document out for the world to see (and incidentally copy. Read the Galatin Divergence, or any of the books in his North American Confederacy series and you'd get the idea that Freedom is more important an ideal than IP)
I guess the real issue here is tangibility. He has every right to those documents that he wrote by hand, or printed, or stored on his hard driver or servers. But if the idea itself gets out of the bottle, what rights can be naturally derived from its existence?
Ooh, how about this as an idea? He tacitly approves of the use of his document by posting it on the web? I mean, I have to send the packets and IP data to request a file from him and his servers then authorize the motherboard to send return packets and the file to my computer.
So, he's authorized the machine to disseminate the file, giving it logic and instructions on what cases may be given the file.