In the US copyright just requires a level of originality. The bar isn't very high, but for example simple logos, like IBMs blue lines logo is not copyrightable.

There are examples of software code that is probably not copyrightable, but that's limited to very simple code that has only obvious implementations.

>Copyrighting software is as absurd the other things you listed.

I don't really agree, and for context I think copyright in general is nonsense.