In the Soviet Union the state owned all media (de facto) and you had to get permission from a party official before you published or copied anything. It's not the same thing as a free for all.

It's actually the first sentence from your quote. One state owned company had a monopoly on software exports. Soviet citizens were not allowed to write code and export it themselves, or import software from Western countries. They had heavy censorship and centralized control over everything.

In a way it's the ultimate endpoint of copyright. One {person, state, company} owns everything and you have to ask them for permission to do anything with it.