Wouter van Ooijen wrote:

> who would pay for the development of the next generation of medicines?

That's one of the problems... the only "medicines" that get promoted
large-scale (and of which the average doctor knows) are the ones that make
money, which are not necessarily the ones that make or keep people healthy.


> Ask artists, authors, etc what they think about a world without
> copyright... Ask the rest of the world what they think of a world
> without artists, authors, etc.

Let's see... music for example. Most of what many lovers of music would
describe as the "high art of music" (classical music) was written in a
world without even the notion of a formal copyright. I know that the world
is different now, and even then there were the odd struggles about who
wrote what first. But still... there's a clear relationship between the
market force and copyright, but not an as clear one between the quality and
copyright.

Performing artists can live very well without copyright; they have their
own form of copyright built-in, so to speak. 

This is also a question about professional art, which is as controversial
as professional religion... If you think that art is something that's in
everybody and a need of expression of everybody, and that fostering this is
more important than whether or not a few are making money by the bucket
loads with their art, then copyright becomes much less important, or even
counterproductive.

Art in this sense of personal expression is possibly less common today than
200 years ago, with all the copyright protection that we are having. I'm
not sure whether it's relatively easier to become a full-time artist. (I
mean relative to the much higher economic efficiency today, and the
therefore much higher surplus to spend on not necessary things.)

> stupidpatentsystem

This one expresses it probably best, but isn't very catchy :)

Gerhard

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