Whatever this alternative business model looks like it needs to be legally possible for me to watch any movie, listen to any song or read any book I like for free. Alternatively, people will find illegal ways to do this. They'll share files over this internet or bring their harddrives round to each others houses. Inevitably, the only way to effectively stop people doing this will be to ban private communication and have DRM required on all our hardware. Otherwise piracy will still be possible.

I'm all for rewarding artists to encourage them to create more work, but I'd rather it be impossible to finance big-budget cinema then have the kind of dystopia that would be required to enforce copyright law.

I hear you - and I do think the kind of distribution you picture is clearly where we are going to end up. It just takes time: time for hard-liners to retire, time for a hugely complicated distribution system to rationalize itself. But we will get there - and I think it'll be a great thing for all the arts.

Now, about it being 'impossible to finance big-budget cinema': the elimination of copyrights would hardly have that effect - it would actually make it easier to finance Hollywood movies because the cost of licensing works on which films are based would become zero. In the case of a film like Lord of the Rings - the estate's deal was for 7.5% of GROSS. Take those kinds of costs out and you get a much cheaper film to make.

As for a dystopia being required to enforce copyright law: all that is required to enforce copyright law is for the law to be aligned with the marketplace. In any such case, that means the law is infrequently or inconsequentially transgressed; it isn't the law that is feared it is the enforcement.

As I stated before, the law and the marketplace need to get together. When they do, it'll be a fine thing and won't require crazy DRM or a dystopia.

You mentioned "reasonable safeguards" but I don't see how any legal safeguards can be both reasonable and effective - If they're able to stop me from sending someone a copyrighted file then they're necessarily able to monitor and control every channel of digital communication that's available to me. I don't think we'll actually end up with crazy DRM and a dystopia It's just that that's the logical conclusion of the industry and government's current approach. Until we take a stand against this things will get worse before they get better.

When the law is aligned with the market people will choose to pay for things. The only safeguard content producers will have is people's sense of reciprocity. This transition will take time but its a transition that can and should be supported by people in the tech startup space.

>There is no case for piracy per se.

You are right. However - at least for me - it was never about making a case for piracy. It was making a case against copyright. Piracy is merely (as you point out yourself) a symptom, a consequence. The true cause is the completely absurd concept of copyright, the notion that you can own ideas, and the abstruse line of argument that correlates existence of art and innovation to the restriction of distribution and usage thereof.

Copyright gives an economic incentive to produce art. You can't exactly create blockbuster films or high quality TV series in your spare time. The issue is that the government has extended the reach of copyright beyond what was originally intended. Should you be allowed to make copies of someone else's movie and hand them out to all your friends? Probably not. Should you be allowed to put a little clip of it on YouTube as a joke? I think so.

The concept of copyright is not absurd at all. The notion that one has rights to their own ideas is a marvelous development of liberal productive societies; it is a hallmark. It has allowed value to accrue to things that were actually valuable while also being intangible.

The mere existence of art and innovation is not enough to make up for the destruction of rights to one's own work or ideas. Putting the progress of art and innovation solely in the hands of hobbyists is like saying the start-up world will work fine if no one gets funding anymore because people can always code stuff themselves at home on the weekend.

I am not saying at all that the status quo form of those rights is the only viable form. But to dismiss rights out-of-hand is throwing the baby out with the bathwater and choosing a very weird solution [turning back the clock] to a very modern problem.

Marvelous? It is an interesting idea, yes, but if even Landes & Posner express clear doubt over whether it does any good overall, one ought not overdo it.

> It has allowed value to accrue to things that were actually valuable while also being intangible.

It allowed price to be given to them, but since that detracts from the value we can immediately see it is not such a clearly good proposition -- it is very questionable.

Copyright gets by to a large degree on a conservative mind-set. It is almost impossible to see alternative ideas, but very easy to appreciate what actually exists. Caution is not all wrong, but when the greatest information tech in history has recently been invented, one would think the situation is more about turning the clock forward not back.

"It allowed price to be given to them, but since that detracts from the value we can immediately see it is not such a clearly good proposition -- it is very questionable."

Something can only be priced because it has value already.

As for seeing alternative ideas: while hardly a conservative - I think it's a great development to allow ideas to be monetized. If someone has an alternative system to copyright that can do that I am truly all-ears . . .

What I find illogical is this idea that we should move forward to a world where we run a knowledge-based economy but that that knowledge shouldn't have any monetary value. Are we going to barter ideas between one another to make ends meet? I'd love to hear how . . .

> Something can only be priced because it has value already.

You're missing the point. Ideas are invaluable. Assigning them a price detracts that value.

> I think it's a great development to allow ideas to be monetized.

The idea that everything needs to be monetize-able to be worth investing in/spending time on is, for lack of better words, a disease.

> What I find illogical is this idea that we should move forward to a world where we run a knowledge-based economy but that that knowledge shouldn't have any monetary value.

How is this illogical? Knowledge had no monetary value to being with, because it's worth more than any amount of money.

Also, we're not going to run a "knowledge-based economy". We're going to move to a knowledge-based society that most likely will depend on a service-based economy in which everyone can profit off each other's innovations, allowing for incremental development that will speed up progress by magnitudes.

> Are we going to barter ideas between one another to make ends meet? I'd love to hear how . . .

But that's exactly what we're doing right now (licensing etc), and which you rightly point out is illogical to the point of utter absurdness.

> The notion that one has rights to their own ideas is a marvelous development of liberal productive societies

If by "liberal productive society" you mean "capitalism", then yes, copyright is indeed a capitalistic invention. Only in capitalism could the notion of "owning" something which by its very definition is impossible to own remotely make any sense at all.

> It has allowed value to accrue to things that were actually valuable while also being intangible.

Ideas had value even before someone decided that you have to be able to assign them a monetary price. They were invaluable, by virtue of being free. The compulsive need of capitalism to monetize everything has actually destroyed the true value of ideas. We "pirates" fight to restore that value.

> The mere existence of art and innovation is not enough to make up for the destruction of rights to one's own work or ideas.

Except we aren't destroying anything. We're restoring it to the way it's supposed to be. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, the truly destructive thing is copyright.

> Putting the progress of art and innovation solely in the hands of hobbyists is like saying the start-up world will work fine if no one gets funding anymore because people can always code stuff themselves at home on the weekend.

First, abolishing copyright (and by extension, intellectual property - which is not to be confused) does not mean you put progress into the hands of "hobbyists". We're just taking it out of the hands of monopolists, for the good of everyone.

Second, you're committing a very common fallacy made by pro-copyright people: you assert that copyright is essential to do business. It isn't.

Third, you imply that we have to care that business models will fail. They do all the time. Now, I ask why a business model that relies entirely on artificially constructed, nonsensical laws has any right to exist in the first place?

> But to dismiss rights out-of-hand is throwing the baby out with the bathwater and choosing a very weird solution [turning back the clock] to a very modern problem.

And another fallacy. You assert that since copyright was invented at some point, it was progress, and that abolishing it again will therefore be a step back. It's the opposite actually. The invention (and implementation) of copyright was a step back in the first place, so abolishing it will bring us back to where we are supposed to be.

I will take one point: the idea that by abolishing copyright you are taking progress out of the hands of monopolies. Copyright is the power that gives the 'little man' the ability to do that already. Copyright puts the power/value of an idea on a level playing field with the already-powerful and already-valuable.

Abolishing copyright would make the weak even weaker. The only proof one needs to see is that in the music business - where I come from - there has been a de facto absence of copyright protection for a decade now.

It hasn't done away with the 'monopolies' or large corporations.

It hasn't made artists any richer.

It has made it much more difficult for an artist to make money through sale of their primary product.

It has weakened artist positions to the point that they no longer only have to give up a lot of revenue on album sales - which was always they case; the new standard is the 360 deal that lets record and management companies tap into the entire income stream of an artist.

So, sorry, ten years in throwing copyright out has actually created the opposite effects that you predict.

> Copyright is the power that gives the 'little man' the ability to do that already.

I'm really sorry, but in what world do you live? Copyright is abused by the big corporations to secure monopolies, and isn't, wasn't and won't ever be meant for artists. It's the same argument as with patents, really. The myth that they serve to protect the poor, small man is a lie spread and maintained by exactly those who profit from them - the big corporations.

> The only proof one needs to see is that in the music business - where I come from - there has been a de facto absence of copyright protection for a decade now.

And what "music business" would that be? I only see copyright getting more draconian by the year.

> It has made it much more difficult for an artist to make money through sale of their primary product.

Well, maybe you should reconsider what your "primary product" is. A musician is a performer, first and foremost, and a concert is a service. There's also merchandise, which are tangible goods.

>album sales

Album sales have been dead for years now. Why are you trying to cling to a dead distribution/business model?

Copyright is not about ownership of ideas or works; it is about guaranteeing remuneration of artists to permit them to create art without being supported by a patron.