> are responsible for a significant proportion of progress

it's arguable that they are responsible. They help incentivize sure (at least in theory), but would the counterfactual world, in which there's no IP laws, be just as progressive?

It was very hard to make a living as an author or a publisher before IP laws existed. Basically you already had to be independently wealthy, have a sponsor or a day-job if you wanted to write. Which one could argue impedes progress to a non insignificant degree.

And that’s only content creation patents and protection of trade secrets is another matter.

Copyright terms were a lot shorter in the past. 70 years after death is absolutely unreasonable. Also crap like DRM prevents works from going into public domain.

Yes, the system definitely needs some tweaking. I wouldn’t say this means that there is something inherently wrong about it just because of that.