What I would love to see is a study to see if this core argument for the copyright industry /has any merit at all/. Music, and masterpieces, existed long, long before copyright became a social reality - the idea that we, as a culture, /must/ have copyright to defend our poor artists and creators is disingenuous at best.
Since 1557 the Stationers' Company enforced the copyright of all published works in the UK until 1709, which then transferred copyright from the manufacturer to the author. Essentially put, all of modern English literature has been covered by copyright in one form or another.
Literature before copyright was fortunate to be read by more than a thousand people. Most of our literary heritage is dependent solely on the work of Monasteries that preserved the works through reproduction for hundreds of years and passed on tomes that would never have survived. The mere fact is, is that copyright followed shortly after the printing press' mass adoption to protect writers from the illegal reproduction of their works on a mass scale.
It's ignorant to argue the world would be better without copyright when copyright has existed throughout the whole of modern western civilization. We wouldn't have many of our greatest works, with original copies still available if it wasn't for the mass production and publication enabled by copyright. Mary Shelley had more copies made of Frankenstein in its first print run (~10,000) than entire authors just a few hundred years before her would manage in their entire careers as an author.
So please, please point to an era of civilization where copyright didn't exist and where mass production of literature, music or art was available and the industry thrived. Because in 1400's a single book was worth equivalent to a farm or vineyard. Universities rarely had more than a few hundred books.
The destruction of the Library of Alexandria would be equivalent to the destruction of a federal reserve. I still fail to see how the argument against copyright always descends into an absurdest world without its existence, where book prices will literally end up costing houses because authors will be forced to make all their profit off of the sale of a single book for a years work. Quite literally it'll be ~$30,000 per book, or copyright will be required in some form to ensure the author is paid his dues.
Culture has never been free, it's just that in recent times it has become free to steal and people have absurdly come to believe that that's how our ancestors lived.
(my bias appears to be peeking through at this point, I'll admit)
Before that, the unapproved printing of someone's work fell under either theft or fraud (selling a forgery with full knowledge of its fakery) and without copyright it would default back to this. If anything copyright legislation is light going compared to dealing with the actual court system.
I don't know about you, but downloading a torrent is better punished by a $10,000 fine than a 3 year prison sentence (IIRC that's the minimum sentence for theft >$1000 in many countries where copyright infringement is highly present, and still is in many parts of Europe).
The simple fact is that under the law, copyright legislation (even though it's got particularly overbearing on individuals) is intended to prevent the unauthorised republication of works (not the redistribution) for money by companies. It's never been intended to stop an individual from getting a copy of a book without paying, in fact the front page (or one of them) usually describes the rules and exceptions to copyright, namely that people can freely trade, sell or give a book so long as it is in its original binding and is in a similar quality to how you received it(no missing pages). There's little sense in preventing someone from photocopying a book, as the person can just read it and hand it on. Any other use of copyright law is a misuse under the original laws intention and should be thrown out in court, sadly this isn't the case.
Copyright was originally good, and did originally increase innovation and largely I like to believe it still does. It's just as humans we rarely see the good for the bad, and for the RIAA and MPAA's current actions it's hard to see any good in copyright because they've perverted the intention of the law from companies to individuals.
Only if they are hard to copy.
Lack of copyright would alter the kinds of things people produce.
In some sense, copyright leads to a less efficient market as actors arise to exploit and abuse the rules of copyright, which creates a derivative market. The derivative, which is often times simply arbitrage, has no more, and often less, right to exist than the thing it is based on. No one complains that easy copying is going to put CD manufacturers out of business (well, the MPAA tried, with their "Who Makes Movies?" campaign http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Makes_Movies%3F ). A lot of of the talk about how copyright is valuable has to do with keeping the derivative market that copyright enables running, and ignores the true originators: the creators.
And then there's the tired position of why does the creation of art need to be tied to a market or associated with capitalism? Really, it's the existence of copyright that does the tying/associating, which explicitly outlines who has legal rights to economically exploit a work. One could argue that in a system where artificial limits like copyright don't exist, if any one person wants to make a living doing something but can not, then they shouldn't. Additionally, art that doesn't get made (for whatever reason) most likely shouldn't get made: if no one wants to have it made, not even the artist has a drive to create it, then it has zero value; however, this is a position that is just about as (un)testable as the opposite position that all art does have some value.
The rise of recording technology means that more people can make more kinds of music without having to have a particular set of instrument skills. There are various types of music that are either impossible or just impractical to create live. There's music meant to be listened under non-stage, non-live circumstances (the various flavors of ambient, for example).
So, while records and CDs may have started off as a way to capture a sort-of live event, that's long gone. It may still be true for some, but for many it's an end in itself.
If people are dissuaded from producing CDs or other digital artifacts, they will also be dissuaded from creating art that is best rendered via CD, etc.
"And then there's the tired position of why does the creation of art need to be tied to a market or associated with capitalism? "
Markets are a fact of life. The question is, what sort of (economic) system best deals with that? No matter what you do, people will be trading, and that will include art.
Art is just another human activity, like screwing and hunting. It will find its way into commerce no matter what.
That's a good thing.
While on the surface this is sad, I'm not so sure this is much different than if CDs had never been invented. No one laments the lack of music generated with an instrument that doesn't exist.
Markets are a fact of life. The question is, what sort of (economic) system best deals with that? No matter what you do, people will be trading, and that will include art.
Just to be clear, this was my point (I was trying to head off claims that art shouldn't be subjected to capitalism because it's art). I definitely agree it's a good thing that it's part of the human condition, and that's the basis for my point that art will be created anyway, even without the protections of copyright.