Copyright law is supposed to help consumers by protecting innovation, not producers by protecting profits. If we’re not having an innovation problem, we’re not having a problem that needs to be fixed through copyright.
This shows a poor understanding of the costs of innovation and where those costs come from.
Most Conservatives have some from of Free Market “Greed is Good” philosophy, which is essentially an excuse for greedy maneuvers like Trickle Down Economics and money grubbing legal tactics. Greed is not good, it’s just greed.
The problem comes in with completely opposed viewpoints like the one stated above. Innovation costs money, that money comes from corporate revenues, those revenues are endangered by knock-offs, generics, reverse engineering, corporate espionage, and other industrial copycat scams. Copyrights are designed to make innovation profitable, which is beneficial as both motivation (the “Greed is Good” argument) and even the possibility of further innovation.
Without some balance of the two extremes, Conservative fear-mongering about how “high taxes put businesses out of business” would prove true. Businesses shouldn’t be allowed to run roughshod over citizens, but copycats shouldn’t be allowed to run roughshod over innovators either.
Gizmodo just did an article about earbuds, but this concept could easily be applied to the knock-off Zunes and iPods sold at the local bodegas, or for that matter any innovative product on Earth. The bottom line is, the innovators lose money every time these competitors make a sale, and that is money that won’t be funneled into Research and Development of Next Generation goods.
