You haven’t actually thought through what kind of world it would be if there was no copyright law, have you? I don’t know what your political leanings are, but I’ve met some libertarians who are blissfully naive about the extent to which their world and worldview is buttressed by laws and the governments that enforce them, and your comment reminds me of that.
I'm from a country which basically ignore all copyright laws in practice. The musical scene relies on live sessions to generate any money, and the movie scene (which was never anything special) is mostly dead. That's because any media that hits the market is copied and sold everywhere. Even books, if they got popular, will get copied and sold with little enforcement, at every corner.
This is mostly because the means to copy requires little effort compared to the act of creating. So, there is no incentive to create because you wouldn't make a living out of it. Imagine spending two years writing a book and someone buys one and copy it to sell at 25%. He can make a profit at a lower threshold than you, so you as a creator cannot compete.
> the movie scene (which was never anything special) is mostly dead
To be fair, from my experience most countries don't have much of a movie scene even with copyright and instead mostly import hollywood stuff.
> This is mostly because the means to copy requires little effort compared to the act of creating. So, there is no incentive to create because you wouldn't make a living out of it. Imagine spending two years writing a book and someone buys one and copy it to sell at 25%. He can make a profit at a lower threshold than you, so you as a creator cannot compete.
So don't compete by selling copies but by funding the creation up front. No one is claiming that abolishing copyright won't be disruptive to any existing business models - in fact, that's the point: once something becomes part of our shared culture it is ridiculous to let one entity continue to have exclusive rights so if your business model relies on continued royalties, find a better one.
Otherwise, perhaps consider continued payments to everyone who built your house, computer and whatever else you use if you think that is a great way for society to function. Don't worry, the way things are going we might get there via technical means anyway.
What do you describe is true everywhere. Books were never a get-rich-quick-scheme. There are like seven bands in all of history that get significant revenue from anything other than live shows.
But what do you mean, no incentive to create?
The Tao Te Ching was reluctantly written after the author was begged by his pupils. Most Greek philosopher's teachings were only written down after their death because other people thought that's an important job. On The Origin Of Species is a book because that was just the normal way to communicate scientific findings in Darwin's time. Da Vinci saw some fat commissions in his life, but Mona Lisa certainly never brought him any money. In fact, out of my twenty favorite artists maybe two saw anything approaching fame in their lifetime.
Please, go to some random DeviantArt page or Spotify profile or GitHub repo with 3 views and tell me why it exists when the only reason for human creation is dollars and red carpets...what a sad perspective, really
Well, Linux might not exist, at least not in its current nature form, enabled by a “share and share alike” license that has meant that companies contribute to it instead of copying and closing it off from others.
More generally, what is left to protect any creative work besides guarding physical access? Why would any company make any movie or tv show if it could be copied and redistributed by others endlessly the moment it gets shown once?
That's assuming the only way to fund the creation of something is to sell copies after the fact. And assuming that people only create for monetary compensation.
There have been creative endeavous before copyright and there would be creative endeavours after copyright. Perhaps even more since people are free to remix and share without restrictions.
Well since you asked, I am about as far away from libertarian as you can be without making a point out of it.
That doesn't mean I must be in favor of every repressive innovation-stifling law that was ever cooked up.
You bring up the arts in another comment; ever considered why like half the people regarded as genuinely world-changing or geniuses (da Vinci, Galileo, Columbus, Machiavelli, Michelangelo) were born in the same two hundred years in the same region? Because the Italian renaissance was all about intense, free information-sharing! People freely visited each others work places and ruthlessly stole form each other, and it was accepted. Boom, you get a period of unparalleled human productivity.
And now you want to tell me that a set of weird laws who only ever benefited Disney and Elsevier are the only thing preventing humanity from ceasing to create awesome shit? Nah man, the masses will always continue creating, exactly as proven by the fact that they did in the last decades while getting continuously butt-fucked by the very laws you pretend are made to protect them...
