When was copyright invented? Why? What were things like before then? What would prevent that from still working today?
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Independent OSS ecosystems would cease to exist as no-one would dare release open source code... it would just be appropriated without even giving credit to the original author, let alone any form of compensation.
Which is why SQLite doesn't exist. [ http://sqlite.org/copyright.html ]
This also assumes there's no distinction made between copying and attribution.
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That being said: abolishing it without replacing it would simply abolish writing, music, art, journalism, etc. as primary disciplines or careers. Without copyright the only way to make money in these fields would be to turn all of your work into advertisement
For music at least, I seem to recall hearing that most bands already get the bulk of their money from live shows?
I agree with your point with respect to open source code however. Open source software licensing, especially permissive licenses, is largely divorced from attribution--especially in the context of those actually using the software.
There may be a more elegant and fair solution, but no solution and pretending the problem does not exist is not it.
We've had copyright almost as long as we've had technology to easily reproduce artistic works.
Because they sold their copyright on their music to record companies in exchange for funding their studio recording and promotion.
BTW, open source -- the darling of the "information wants to be free" crowd -- would also be toast. Proprietary vendors would simply take all open source code, strip off its authorship and add proprietary features, then 'extinguish' by leveraging vertical integration and UX to make it 'theirs.' Independent OSS ecosystems would cease to exist as no-one would dare release open source code... it would just be appropriated without even giving credit to the original author, let alone any form of compensation.
Intellectual property law is indeed broken. That brokenness probably starts with a flawed bit of reasoning by analogy; trying to extend the concept of physical property into the intellectual realm is an ugly hack to shoehorn intellectual value creation into ancient frameworks of property and contract law. Its brokenness also stems from self-serving lobbyists taking it over, e.g. the endless "Mickey Mouse protection acts" that have extended copyright terms to infinity.
That being said: abolishing it without replacing it would simply abolish writing, music, art, journalism, etc. as primary disciplines or careers. Without copyright the only way to make money in these fields would be to turn all of your work into advertisement; Buzzfeed would be the future of all art. That's a hellish dystopia if I've ever seen one.
I wonder if the solution might not be technical. Google "homomorphic encryption."