Or maybe there would be many more of such projects if people weren't put off from starting them in the first place by copyright laws.
Maybe, but based on the evidence we have that's just speculation. Perhaps copyright and fear of litigation isn't a common reason why people don't make things. As we see from the link this thread is about, people do make things using other people's IP.
Maybe copyright laws push people who are concerned about being sued to make original works instead of making nothing as you're asserting. That would actually be very a positive outcome, and arguably a great reason to keep copyrights. After all, there's nothing stopping people making things. The only thing they're prevented from doing is using someone else's IP.
I suspect that many of the people who are creating things which violate copyright law are simply unaware that what they are doing is against the law (they feel that they have rights which they actually don't) or they misunderstand the law (See: "No Copyright Intended" descriptions on youtube videos).
Some certainly also think that enforcement is lax enough that they won't be caught, or at least not before others have mirrored the content, or that they won't face meaningful consequences when they are caught, but I think we absolutely cannot say that the existence of copyright violations proves that the laws aren't hurting us by preventing popular original works from being made.
> The only thing they're prevented from doing is using someone else's IP.
Consider what happened with blurred lines (see https://mcpherson-llp.com/articles/crushing-creativity-the-b...) We know copyright law hurts people that aren't using anyone else's IP.
This guy has a lot to say on the problems with the idea that using other people's IP is a bad thing in the first place:
https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_laws_that_choke_cr...
See the "Copyright & distribution:" section from https://www.sitasingstheblues.com/faq.html for an example from an artist who almost wasn't able to make their work at all because of the problems. It was only extraordinary sacrifice that allowed that artist to bring her creative (and I think highly entertaining) work into the world, and that creator is convinced that a bar set that high leaves a lot of artists unable to clear the hurdle.
That seems like an odd argument to be making in a discussion about a cool project someone made despite it infringing copyright. Maybe copyright laws don't put people off in the way that you're claiming they do.