The market for recorded music is a novelty, even compared to modern copyright laws. 99.99% of musicians have a day job. If it disappeared tomorrow it would be a blip in the history of culture. There is zero evidence that today's copyright terms have a positive effect on culture.
I'm sorry, but blowing such thinking a bit out of proportion one could go as far as saying that intelligent life on Earth is a blip in the history of our planet, and is just a blip even on geological scale. What does it mean?
Sadly the copyright is abused badly (even "good-guy" Amazon self publish takes away 70% of money spent on one's book (that's the number I arrived at when I was looking through the rules).
It's hard to say if it doesn't have positive effect of culture, since before it's introduction art was funded mostly by state/exceptionally wealthy establishments.
What I'm getting at is that superficial modes of commerce are fleeting and culture isn't. Culture is as old as human nature.
Newspapers and their hold on the local ad market were swept away in a few years. But writing hasn't died. Why should anyone pervert the concept of owning and controlling a computer just to prevent the RIAA model of a recording industry and the Hollywood model of movies from dying?
That's a bit like laws to preserve 6 lane roads and big box stores because they should be a permanent part of the landscape.
I was talking about human presence on Earth in general.
But newspapers are still exactly the same as they were, stuffed with ads. They might not have dominance, but haven't really changed.
And I didn't say anything about keeping RIAA or locked down systems.
I don't own a game console and never will. I find Android too locked down for my tastes, if that explains anything.
It's true that selfish efforts to fight back changes are pathetic and must be stopped, but abolishing patents/copyright completely would just cause massive depression. I don't like how companies are abusing it through breaking your own stuff so you buy new stuff or replacement parts, but that's their business model. The underlying issue is that the corporate culture requires such behaviour, how else wouod you pay an army of managers and the board-horde?
"but abolishing patents/copyright completely would just cause massive depression"
That's a strange brew of alarmism. What commerce would actually stop if copyright and patent terms were, say, returned to the original Copyright Act terms?
