And an economic argument against that is that if many of those works are never created, then that would make those that are created more valuable. Copyright thus limits the income potential of the _really_ good creators.
Not necessarily. Consider music, where artists have more potential to make money from live performances than they do from album sales, the musicians would still create music but the sale-able service continues to be access see the musician live. I guess "the kinds of things people produce" would change in that they no longer "produce CDs", but really the musicians never really produced CDs anyway -- CD production was a side effect of the delivery of the content. What it would end up weeding out is the no-talent hacks and middlemen who are only in the industry to exploit the fact that things can not be easily copied by flooding the market with access and physical goods containing sub-par quality content. Because there are fewer creators, the supply goes down, and thus value, of the product in general (not a specific instance of the product), goes up. People still produce music, but since there are no arbitrageurs, the market is more efficient.
In some sense, copyright leads to a less efficient market as actors arise to exploit and abuse the rules of copyright, which creates a derivative market. The derivative, which is often times simply arbitrage, has no more, and often less, right to exist than the thing it is based on. No one complains that easy copying is going to put CD manufacturers out of business (well, the MPAA tried, with their "Who Makes Movies?" campaign http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Makes_Movies%3F ). A lot of of the talk about how copyright is valuable has to do with keeping the derivative market that copyright enables running, and ignores the true originators: the creators.
And then there's the tired position of why does the creation of art need to be tied to a market or associated with capitalism? Really, it's the existence of copyright that does the tying/associating, which explicitly outlines who has legal rights to economically exploit a work. One could argue that in a system where artificial limits like copyright don't exist, if any one person wants to make a living doing something but can not, then they shouldn't. Additionally, art that doesn't get made (for whatever reason) most likely shouldn't get made: if no one wants to have it made, not even the artist has a drive to create it, then it has zero value; however, this is a position that is just about as (un)testable as the opposite position that all art does have some value.
" CD production was a side effect of the delivery of the content."
The rise of recording technology means that more people can make more kinds of music without having to have a particular set of instrument skills. There are various types of music that are either impossible or just impractical to create live. There's music meant to be listened under non-stage, non-live circumstances (the various flavors of ambient, for example).
So, while records and CDs may have started off as a way to capture a sort-of live event, that's long gone. It may still be true for some, but for many it's an end in itself.
If people are dissuaded from producing CDs or other digital artifacts, they will also be dissuaded from creating art that is best rendered via CD, etc.
"And then there's the tired position of why does the creation of art need to be tied to a market or associated with capitalism? "
Markets are a fact of life. The question is, what sort of (economic) system best deals with that? No matter what you do, people will be trading, and that will include art.
Art is just another human activity, like screwing and hunting. It will find its way into commerce no matter what.
If people are dissuaded from producing CDs or other digital artifacts, they will also be dissuaded from creating art that is best rendered via CD, etc.
While on the surface this is sad, I'm not so sure this is much different than if CDs had never been invented. No one laments the lack of music generated with an instrument that doesn't exist.
Markets are a fact of life. The question is, what sort of (economic) system best deals with that? No matter what you do, people will be trading, and that will include art.
Just to be clear, this was my point (I was trying to head off claims that art shouldn't be subjected to capitalism because it's art). I definitely agree it's a good thing that it's part of the human condition, and that's the basis for my point that art will be created anyway, even without the protections of copyright.
Additionally, I think it can also be said that a market of some kind will spring up around anything people value and can possess. "Success" will bring competition and/or copy-cats which will help alleviate shortage of supply, etc.
artists have made more money via licensing than anything else. even indie bands nowadays can make bank if they license a song to a commercial or movie or what have you. In that respect copyright is a winner. I firmly believe that if someone wants to use your art to support their product in some way then the artist should be compensated. whether or not the artist gets to say yes or no to the licensing of his or her work is a whole other debate.
That's true, but licensing in that sense has nothing to do with something being easy to copy, nor would keep artists who want to create from creating. Licensing for derivitive works should be legally seperate from the artifical restrictions placed on copying/access to an infinitely replicable resource. One has to do with getting credit for your work, the other doesn't; oddly, one of the reasons people share music or obtain it without paying for it is because it is authentic, there is no drive to get knockoff Beatles songs covered by someone else who claims to be the Beatles.
