But was copyright law developed out of /fear/ of theft, or out of actual, documented loss of creativity post-innovation? What quantitative basis does the copyright industry have to assert so much control over our artistic culture, in the name of protecting it?
(my bias appears to be peeking through at this point, I'll admit)
Copyright evolved shortly after the mass adoption of the printing press in the UK, in fact the control of copyright was handed to a monopolised printing company. This enabled the printing company to control the sale of their authors books and prevent other publishers stealing their work (not individuals, but companies).
Before that, the unapproved printing of someone's work fell under either theft or fraud (selling a forgery with full knowledge of its fakery) and without copyright it would default back to this. If anything copyright legislation is light going compared to dealing with the actual court system.
I don't know about you, but downloading a torrent is better punished by a $10,000 fine than a 3 year prison sentence (IIRC that's the minimum sentence for theft >$1000 in many countries where copyright infringement is highly present, and still is in many parts of Europe).
The simple fact is that under the law, copyright legislation (even though it's got particularly overbearing on individuals) is intended to prevent the unauthorised republication of works (not the redistribution) for money by companies. It's never been intended to stop an individual from getting a copy of a book without paying, in fact the front page (or one of them) usually describes the rules and exceptions to copyright, namely that people can freely trade, sell or give a book so long as it is in its original binding and is in a similar quality to how you received it(no missing pages). There's little sense in preventing someone from photocopying a book, as the person can just read it and hand it on. Any other use of copyright law is a misuse under the original laws intention and should be thrown out in court, sadly this isn't the case.
Copyright was originally good, and did originally increase innovation and largely I like to believe it still does. It's just as humans we rarely see the good for the bad, and for the RIAA and MPAA's current actions it's hard to see any good in copyright because they've perverted the intention of the law from companies to individuals.
I think copyright law was developed with the intention of promoting innovation. And in theory, it should do this. But this assumes that everyone is motivated by monetary gain. So copy right law might have applied more when it was first developed because more people were creating things to sustain living back in the days when lower level needs like food was more of an issue. Nowadays we might have more people innovating for the sake of doing something great, so copyright law might be applying less and less everyday to our current society.
(my bias appears to be peeking through at this point, I'll admit)