Destroying copyright would make some business models go extinct.
However, society should use IP laws to maximize the societal goods of creation, not to keep the entrenched players' businesses profitable.
There are hundreds of ways to monetize creative works. It's laughable to think that creativity will cease if we don't allow 70 year rent-seeking on the products of that effort.
I think 90%+ percent of "societally useful" IP revenue would be preserved if copyright terms were only 1 year. If it was eliminated entirely, artists would move to crowdfunding and commission based methods of getting paid for creation.
I think the first half of last century's music industry is an interesting example: back then the vast majority of artists rose to prominence by playing already-popular songs before transitioning into their own songwriting. How much is creativity squelched by the current system where licensing is at the arbitrary discretion of the IP owner, and how should society weigh this against the potential reduced economic incentive to create works if cultural products become freely distributable?
I think what you'd see instead is a widespread destruction of some kinds of creative industries, combined with a retreat to technology platforms that enforce copyright with technological rather than legal means. See: the video games industry and the domination of consoles, the iOS App Store.
Video games are protected by copyright but it doesn't have much teeth, modulo occasional arrests of crack authors. What happened was not that people gave up on charging for video games, but rather it created a market for sufficiently secure platforms that piracy was very hard.
The greatest way to support art is UBI. Why should creativity be subject to the arbitrary whims of the lowest common denominator? For every Harry Potter there are hundreds of authors who can't even make enough to write full time. And some of what we consider to be quality literature would never be commercially successful in a modern context.
However, society should use IP laws to maximize the societal goods of creation, not to keep the entrenched players' businesses profitable.
There are hundreds of ways to monetize creative works. It's laughable to think that creativity will cease if we don't allow 70 year rent-seeking on the products of that effort.
I think 90%+ percent of "societally useful" IP revenue would be preserved if copyright terms were only 1 year. If it was eliminated entirely, artists would move to crowdfunding and commission based methods of getting paid for creation.
I think the first half of last century's music industry is an interesting example: back then the vast majority of artists rose to prominence by playing already-popular songs before transitioning into their own songwriting. How much is creativity squelched by the current system where licensing is at the arbitrary discretion of the IP owner, and how should society weigh this against the potential reduced economic incentive to create works if cultural products become freely distributable?