Copyright laws are necessary in order for a society to have an effective creative industry.

However he then goes on to say that this definition means that profit is a necessary attribute of an industry while it in fact says no such thing. According to this definition industry must be productive OR profit-making, not necessarily both. Therefore as an industry does not have to be sustainable or profitable to produce a desired effect, the content of my first post still fully applies." Okay, so in order for you to defend the productiveness, the industry must remain productive, which cannot happen without copyright laws. "I don't think this is entirely fair as his initial post and resolution did not make such a stipulation, merely requiring a desired effect, not defining who would desire such an effect." Ah, but if the creative industry is not effective for those who create, the creative industry will cease to exist, which means that the creative industry must be effective for the artists to be effective at all. I am justified in dismissing some of your "effectivenesses". "As a side note, while the artists are clearly the creative people within the industry, in almost all cases it is the money-men who have created the industry (the productive or profit-making enterprise.) As I explained in my first post these parties would certainly not need copyright laws to achieve their desired effects, in fact quite the opposite." Without artists to exploit, however, there can be no exploiters. "This scenario is certainly not producing a desired effect for the artist who has been ripped off, but as it is providing one for the plagiarising artist it actually disproves the resolution. The same applies to the examples of video games and movies. The idea that all authors would experience the bizarre sequence of events described by my opponent is of course ludicrous." Without copyright laws, it happens to EVERY ARTIST ALIVE. If bootlegging were to be made legal, it would be seen much more than it is today. MUCH MORE. There are many potential exploiters out there. All it takes is one exploiter at every store, and there is a shopkeeper at every store, who could easily be an exploiter. Nobody would pass up the opportunity to legally steal the credit of another man. "Some kinds of artist's materials are very cheap (some artists create valuable pieces from recycled junk materials) so therefore the argument for artists not profiting does not mean that all creative industries cannot remain productive." Those many hours that the artist put into creating their work? Another man could easily gather identical or near-identical materials and shape them together in that way (much quicker with a model to work with) and steal the credit. "Yes many artists crave personal recognition but there are many others who just want their work to be experienced by as many people as possible, for these individuals copyright laws are not 'absolutely needed' for the industry to achieve one of the effects they desire." I don't think so. Show me an artist who would actually continue to "artify" if received no credit and no profit. "Please provide some evidence that all artists who have been ripped off will lose the will to create. I think I can probably find some evidence that will disprove this." I have the quote from Wikipedia, but beyond that, that task would be difficult, as today, we have copyright laws, so there aren't any authors out there who are ripped off as I have spoken of here. "The Wikipedia source is fascinating but I don't see it's relevance to this debate. I fully support the idea of copyright laws, I just think that a creative industry does not absolutely need them to be 'effective' as defined by my opponent." It is relevant because it talks about how before copyright laws, authors would go into poverty and cease to write, and there was a huge decline in writing until copyright laws were introduced. "I have given ample examples of such desirous effects that could still be achieved and my opponent needs to tackle all of them and prove them wrong, rather than inadequately arguing against just one of them." Not if one effect is necessary for all of the other effects to be accomplished. Thank you for this challenging debate.