What terrible outcome will we see from a lack of copyright law?
This is mostly because the means to copy requires little effort compared to the act of creating. So, there is no incentive to create because you wouldn't make a living out of it. Imagine spending two years writing a book and someone buys one and copy it to sell at 25%. He can make a profit at a lower threshold than you, so you as a creator cannot compete.
To be fair, from my experience most countries don't have much of a movie scene even with copyright and instead mostly import hollywood stuff.
> This is mostly because the means to copy requires little effort compared to the act of creating. So, there is no incentive to create because you wouldn't make a living out of it. Imagine spending two years writing a book and someone buys one and copy it to sell at 25%. He can make a profit at a lower threshold than you, so you as a creator cannot compete.
So don't compete by selling copies but by funding the creation up front. No one is claiming that abolishing copyright won't be disruptive to any existing business models - in fact, that's the point: once something becomes part of our shared culture it is ridiculous to let one entity continue to have exclusive rights so if your business model relies on continued royalties, find a better one.
Otherwise, perhaps consider continued payments to everyone who built your house, computer and whatever else you use if you think that is a great way for society to function. Don't worry, the way things are going we might get there via technical means anyway.
But what do you mean, no incentive to create?
The Tao Te Ching was reluctantly written after the author was begged by his pupils. Most Greek philosopher's teachings were only written down after their death because other people thought that's an important job. On The Origin Of Species is a book because that was just the normal way to communicate scientific findings in Darwin's time. Da Vinci saw some fat commissions in his life, but Mona Lisa certainly never brought him any money. In fact, out of my twenty favorite artists maybe two saw anything approaching fame in their lifetime.
Please, go to some random DeviantArt page or Spotify profile or GitHub repo with 3 views and tell me why it exists when the only reason for human creation is dollars and red carpets...what a sad perspective, really
That's true even in USA (with strong copyrights), apart from for top .1%
More generally, what is left to protect any creative work besides guarding physical access? Why would any company make any movie or tv show if it could be copied and redistributed by others endlessly the moment it gets shown once?
There have been creative endeavous before copyright and there would be creative endeavours after copyright. Perhaps even more since people are free to remix and share without restrictions.
Please do name one industry, niche or platform where copyright does actually prevent this from happening in any meaningful way today.
That doesn't mean I must be in favor of every repressive innovation-stifling law that was ever cooked up.
You bring up the arts in another comment; ever considered why like half the people regarded as genuinely world-changing or geniuses (da Vinci, Galileo, Columbus, Machiavelli, Michelangelo) were born in the same two hundred years in the same region? Because the Italian renaissance was all about intense, free information-sharing! People freely visited each others work places and ruthlessly stole form each other, and it was accepted. Boom, you get a period of unparalleled human productivity.
And now you want to tell me that a set of weird laws who only ever benefited Disney and Elsevier are the only thing preventing humanity from ceasing to create awesome shit? Nah man, the masses will always continue creating, exactly as proven by the fact that they did in the last decades while getting continuously butt-fucked by the very laws you pretend are made to protect them...
