>> (3) economic side effects of laws are incidental.
Not with intellectual property. This isn't ten-commandments stuff, protections against evil. Intellectual property law is an openly commercial law meant to increase the profitability of innovations.
I remember an article from way back about what the Bible would think of copyright "piracy". It is such modern set of laws that anyone mentioned in the bible would probably stare in bewilderment at the concept. It would be like asking about the morality of air traffic control regulations.
I agree that the purpose of copyright is not moral rights, even in theory. But I disagree that the theoretical purpose is profit (i.e. economic benefit to the creator).
The idea (again, this is just in theory) is economic benefit to society overall. The idea is that if there's no copyright then creators would have no economic incentive to create anything, so they wouldn't bother. Profit to copyright owners is just a mechanism to incentivise them to create benefit to society.
Actually, that's the theoretical reason for all profit, not just for copyright.
A consequence of this is that there shouldn't be any increase to copyright term that only increases profits but doesn't increase benefit to society. But obviously political lobbyists don't follow that theory.
> The idea is that if there's no copyright then creators would have no economic incentive to create anything, so they wouldn't bother.
And yet, we've had creative works from all of human history, despite copyright being barely a hundred or two years old, and our modern effectively-infinite conception of copyright is only now reaching 50 years old. This theory doesn't hold up to even a couple seconds of scrutiny.
Not only historically, but today too. If there is one thing in the world that requires no external incentive to motivate, it’s art and creative work. The entire internet is stuffed full of people making and posting creative work, 99% of the time with no expectation of economic benefit. It would all exist anyway, without copyright “nudging it along”. Every garage band in existence would also exist without copyright. Every performer on the street corner would still perform without copyright. Every fanfic site would still have heaps of content without copyright. This idea that “oh, nobody would ever make art if we didn’t give them a near-infinite monopoly on distribution rights” is totally absurd.
The only “art creation” scenario copyright seems to promote is “Corporation hires army of workers to make $100M 17th Spider-Man Sequel”. No, those specific kinds of work probably would not exist without government-mandated monopoly, but to say it promotes art in general is kind of exaggerating.
IIRC one of the earliest copyright laws, Queen Anne's Statute, was made to protect creators (artists, writers) from reproducer-distributors (ie printing press owners).
I think this is the origin and principle aim, to allow production of works professionally - with all the skill and devotion that implies - whilst protecting the creators. Copyright seems to have been steered heavily away from that aim by the usual suspects who rent-seek in preference to adding value to society.
Obviously, we don't need copyright to have any creative works. Some people will do it for free. But the sale of copies is a huge incentive. And the result is much more creative work now than ever before--at least some types.
Pre-copyright, content was either commissioned by patrons or done by bored independently rich people. Artists didn't have some burning desire to paint rich ladies and religious works, that's just what was demanded.
We could go back to that system. But it won't be a prolific as our current system. If copyright ended for TV/movies, we'd probably get some BBC/PBS content, some indie movies, but we'd probably just have a bunch of reality TV with an insane amount of product placement.
I agree that, without copyright, lots of creative works would (and did!) still get created. But there are certainly some creative works that only would get created if copyright law exists. Think of a Pixar-level animated movie or Hollywood-style live action movie, that involve huge teams of people working full time for extended periods.
[Edit: just be clear, people working on side projects on their own and huge multimillion dollar projects are two extremes of a large spectrum. I chose the opposite extreme to make a point but almost everything in the middle also only exists because of copyright.]
Maybe some would still exist to some level through alternative mechanisms e.g. government or charitable funding, or a group effort akin to open source. But I think it's clear that you're talking orders of magnitude less output.
Don't forget copyright also applies to software. It's even more clear that open-source movements work for software! But it's still the case that without copyright there would be some software that wouldn't get written. Certainly, speaking personally, my software economic output would be lower if it weren't my full time job!
Not with intellectual property. This isn't ten-commandments stuff, protections against evil. Intellectual property law is an openly commercial law meant to increase the profitability of innovations.
I remember an article from way back about what the Bible would think of copyright "piracy". It is such modern set of laws that anyone mentioned in the bible would probably stare in bewilderment at the concept. It would be like asking about the morality of air traffic control regulations.