Strenuously disagree because, among other reasons, this would make my profession no longer a viable source of livelihood. But I would support reducing the duration.
I’m a software engineer. If copyright were abolished entirely, then the market for software would shrink dramatically, as many of the people who currently pay for it would stop doing so. There would still be some revenue going into the software market, but it wouldn’t be enough to pay the salaries of all the people currently working there.
“There would be (far) fewer paying jobs in my field” is a different prognosis from “my profession would no longer be a viable source of livelihood”. For all practical purposes, there is no copyright on recipes; people can still sell cookbooks. Perhaps fewer are sold than before the Internet, but cookbooks continue to exist as things that people exchange money for.
many of the people who currently pay for it would stop doing so
I don’t doubt it, but I wonder how many. People do pay for things that they could get for free—either for the convenience of legal acquisition, or because they think the product is worth it. Is there a difference between the set of people who would stop paying for software if copyright were abolished, and people who only buy software now because pirating it is illegal? If so, what? If not, the question becomes, how large is the second set?
Strenuously disagree because, among other reasons, this would make my profession no longer a viable source of livelihood. But I would support reducing the duration.
In what way would it do that?
I’m a software engineer. If copyright were abolished entirely, then the market for software would shrink dramatically, as many of the people who currently pay for it would stop doing so. There would still be some revenue going into the software market, but it wouldn’t be enough to pay the salaries of all the people currently working there.
“There would be (far) fewer paying jobs in my field” is a different prognosis from “my profession would no longer be a viable source of livelihood”. For all practical purposes, there is no copyright on recipes; people can still sell cookbooks. Perhaps fewer are sold than before the Internet, but cookbooks continue to exist as things that people exchange money for.
I don’t doubt it, but I wonder how many. People do pay for things that they could get for free—either for the convenience of legal acquisition, or because they think the product is worth it. Is there a difference between the set of people who would stop paying for software if copyright were abolished, and people who only buy software now because pirating it is illegal? If so, what? If not, the question becomes, how large is the second set?
I don’t think the data that exists is very good, but some attempt has been made to collect info on pirating of games: Google led me to this ars technica article about this call for emails, whose author gave this interview and wrote this followup. And he wrote this essay on copyright which may be relevant.
He also posted a link to an essay about pirating in World of Goo which linked to an essay about pirating Ricochet Infinity.