I'll take another angle. Live-and-let live should be the default case. Copyright is an intrusion on this. If someone wants to drive a tank through freedom by introducing something like copyright, then the onus is on the tank drivers to make the case that the benefits justify the intrusion on freedom.
I've never seen a remotely reasonable attempt at putting that case. The best you get is claims that people wouldn't produce things unless they had vast legal protections and that's plainly false. Mendelssohn wrote symphonies. I write code, in a commercial setting, with copyright not being the justification for it.
Handel is an even better example, because it's well documented that he rearranged lots of previous stuff. We wouldn't have any record of some of those earlier tunes had he not repurposed them in his own works. Handel's _Israel in Egypt_ could not be performed or distributed under current western-world copyright law.
"If an alternative economic model provides a more effective incentive than copyright, then it is unlikely that today's copyright laws prevent anyone from adopting that model instead and reaping the rewards."
When you have copyright law it creates a powerful lobby group and any attempt at reform will come up against them. Much as with my discussion about the church above - an institution that impeded progress and freedom, but which fought ferociously to retain privilege at every step.
What could cause the dam to break would be a major economic slump and a desperate move to try something new to attract smart people. Or something like SOPA may be a step too far, and cause Sweden or New Zealand or Singapore or a special economic zone in China to make a play at being a free-state-style intellectual capital.
I'll take another angle. Live-and-let live should be the default case. Copyright is an intrusion on this. If someone wants to drive a tank through freedom by introducing something like copyright, then the onus is on the tank drivers to make the case that the benefits justify the intrusion on freedom.
I've never seen a remotely reasonable attempt at putting that case. The best you get is claims that people wouldn't produce things unless they had vast legal protections and that's plainly false. Mendelssohn wrote symphonies. I write code, in a commercial setting, with copyright not being the justification for it.
Handel is an even better example, because it's well documented that he rearranged lots of previous stuff. We wouldn't have any record of some of those earlier tunes had he not repurposed them in his own works. Handel's _Israel in Egypt_ could not be performed or distributed under current western-world copyright law.
"If an alternative economic model provides a more effective incentive than copyright, then it is unlikely that today's copyright laws prevent anyone from adopting that model instead and reaping the rewards."
When you have copyright law it creates a powerful lobby group and any attempt at reform will come up against them. Much as with my discussion about the church above - an institution that impeded progress and freedom, but which fought ferociously to retain privilege at every step.
What could cause the dam to break would be a major economic slump and a desperate move to try something new to attract smart people. Or something like SOPA may be a step too far, and cause Sweden or New Zealand or Singapore or a special economic zone in China to make a play at being a free-state-style intellectual capital.