Haraldur, you are missing the point. As has been said, not everyone is on the internet, some people still enjoy going out to theatres to watch movies, some people like being able hold a physical book or a shelf full of movies. Beyond the physical there are large numbers of people that happily pay for things that they can get for free because they are willing to contribute to something they enjoy.
Despite what the media would try to tell you, piracy is not a problem. If copyright vanished there may be a slight uptick in downloads but it is my honest opinion that people would still buy DVDs, they would still go to movie theatres, they would still get their music from iTunes.
If piracy were abolished there is nothing currently in our society that would suggest we would see some kind of second renaissance. You would solve the one way producer-consumer problem but it's naive to think that the world would naturally become a communication utopia: with one problem gone you would introduce several others.
I'm not going to waste time giving examples, I tried to give a general example and you blew it off with a specific solution; that's not how general examples work, we'd be back and forth for weeks. Instead I will encourage you to think for yourself: if you cannot come up with a single instance where a complete lack of copyright results in a bad scenario for the general public that would necessitate further legislation to fix then we absolutely cannot continue this discussion because you lack the imagination necessary to appreciate it.
A cinema can torrent a file as well as anyone else so, given that most of the money is made from the food anyway (though, now, they would not need to pay for licences to the film companies), they will survive quite well if
and only if demand holds. If demand does not hold, then, well, fuck'em. (I like capitalism when it agrees with me... sort of (ugh!)).
Book binders will still exist for a while -- at least as long as PhD students are required to generate a hard-copy of their thesis -- so one can always bind a book oneself. Besides, with DRMed ebooks, publishers themselves are trying to move away from hardcopy, so... I do not care.
I am neutral about whether or not piracy damages the industries. I win either way. I just assume that the wretches are right about the damage when they try to justify censorship, perhaps as a handicap, but also because it allows more fundamental discussion than saying "piracy really has no effect" blah blah blah. As far as I am concerned, if piracy is not a problem, then none of the annoyances of the last ten years -- DRM, DNS-blocking etc. -- are justified. If it
is a problem, then one can argue that copyright is undermined beyond repair and should be allowed to collapse, as the the alternative is too oppressive.
There is no perfect system, no perfect situation. I am unaware of
significant (a wonderfully vague word) downsides (aside from Richard Stallman's notion that it would be bad for free software that, say, the Linux kernel could be modified without redistributed source if copyright was abolished
too soon -- for that I have a lot of sympathy, which is why I mentioned 15-year copyright terms in my first post). Of course, I am currently of the opinion that, even if there were significant downsides, it would be good on balance.
I would like to address one thing you said directly, though.
Besides, even if I am wrong, then perhaps people will be deterred from creating new novels? Would that be so bad? There are already more novels (in English even!) than any one person will read, and that any film company will adapt. No loss, for the consumer. There is no social need for more novels as we have plenty already.
Yes, yes it would be bad. It would be very, very bad. Society is arguably as much a living thing as anything else, metaphysically speaking: it lives, it consumes, it reproduces, it changes. Changes in society are reflected in the media we create and in turn the media we consume alters our society. You may never read every novel, watch every movie, play every video game, or listen to every song but every piece of work created is influenced by and has influence on the world around it. Even the things that never get published, someone had an idea for a story and they started writing it and even if it never gets finished simply thinking about it, their characters the the experiences they would have changed that persons behavior ever so slightly, or perhaps not so slightly: this is how our brains work, manifold ideas all layered up leading to behavior.
If there's a chance that abolishing copyright would lead to a world where production came to a trickle, where only big names could crowdfund movies and novels and a young woman chooses to stop writing because she knows there's no way she'd get the recognition for it then I will fight you on it with every breath I have. That is not a world I want to risk living in.
Abolishing copyright doesn't fix the world, it changes the playing field and creates new problems.
Would it be better if I said "would it be so bad if no one ever published new novels"? Plenty of people make things for themselves that are never given to the world, and plenty of people even
do give things to the world. I do not believe that pretty much anything* will stop people producing fiction** -- there is a lot of original fiction on the internet, including, I believe, large Usenet archives. Granted, a lot of it is pornographic, but, well, people write about what they care about -- what is wrong with that?
*So copyright abolition is fine!
**I do, without publishing, though most of it is in the form of computer game design documents -- ha! Have I ever entertained the idea of publishing? Well, yes, but always as FOSS, so money never really featured.
All change produces new problems. One of my pet phrases is "change is jarring". This is why people are (too?) conservative. Sometimes it is beneficial (like in this case
) and sometimes is it necessary (probably not yet, unfortunately, in this case, though I would benefit greatly -- I imagine game engine reimplimentations, and similar projects, would be more common if people needn't consider the possibility of legal interference).
As a bonus, I suspect the losers from this change would mostly be rich and powerful people (which is also why it would be difficult to change).
