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

Alright, thank you for responding with such a well-thought-out counter. Now, in order to have an effective creative industry, the industry must naturally be able to sustain itself. This is not possible without copyright laws. Let's look at the actual definition for industry: Industry - a distinct group of productive or profit-making enterprises (http://www.merriam-webster.com...) This means that profit is necessary. Let's say that a man spends five years writing up research on world politics. He spends thousands on plane tickets to interview various government officials, and he has put plenty of time into his works. When he publishes it, he decides to put a price of $10 on it, so that he may make a profit when a large number of his book is sold. A man comes to the store and buys one book. Then, he goes home and scans each page, prints out multiple copies, and staples them into books. However, he edits the book so that he is the author, rather than the original man. He then goes to the store and sets them next to the original books, for only ten cents. To add even more insult, he returns the original book that he bought. The first man now has two options: lower the prices of his books, or fail to sell anything. If the lowers the prices, he ends up in a price war with a man who has nothing to lose, as he only has to sell one copy to make a profit, while the first man has a deficit of $2000 to make up. To make matters worse, when the people buy the second man's book, he is stealing all of the credit. Upset with this, the man decides to stop writing and start working at McDonald's. When all of the authors experience this and quit, their creative industry collapses, and thus no longer exists, and is thus no longer effective. It gets even worse with video games and motion pictures. It takes millions of dollars to cast and record a big movie or program a video game, but only a few bucks to put it into each video cassette, DVD, cartridge, or disc. They charge extra money beyond the manufacturing price to make up for the huge deficit they get themselves into upon filming or programming. If another company burns their movie/video game onto their own product and starts to mass produce it, and then change all of the logos and credits to match themselves, then the previous company would collapse into major debt, and ultimately not exist, and the industry would no longer exist, and be no longer effective. I am going to say that for an industry to be effective, it must be effective for the creators of the industry, or else the industry would collapse, allowing me to ignore your points for the Public and Exploiters, and focus on the Artists. "Artists: While it is true that most artists wish and are morally entitled to benefit financially from their creative product and copyright laws protect them in this respect, this is not the only desired effect. Most (all?) artists want there work to be seen/heard etc. by as many people as possible and a lack of copyright laws would actually lead to their product being available to, and therefore experienced by many more people. Therefore these laws are not absolutely necessary for the creative industries to produce A desired effect for some (if not all) artists and some would still want to be involved." For one thing, the artists would no longer make profit, and would thus no longer be able to afford to write/paint/film/program/etc., and the creative industry would collapse and lack effectiveness. Secondly, when the artists want their work to be seen/heard, they want their names attached. The exploiters are easily able to replace the artist's name with their own names. An artist needs to be recognized to feel that their work was effective, in addition to the ability to continue to be an artist, which is necessary for effectiveness. When a man comes out of the blue and steals all of the artist's credit in addition to their profit, they hurt their pride, and they no longer have the will to paint. Or write. Or film. Or program. Or whatever. The point is, the creative industry must be effective for the base in order to be effective for everybody else, and without their credit, the artists no longer make art, and the creative industry collapses and loses effectiveness. From Wikipedia: "The concept of copyright originates with the Statute of Anne (1710) in Britain. It established the author of a work as the owner of the right to copy that work and the concept of a fixed term for that copyright. It was created as an act 'for the encouragement of learning', as it had been noted at the time that publishers were reprinting the works of authors without their consent 'to their very great detriment, and too often to the Ruin of them and their Families'. As such, copyright was first created with the intention that authors might have some control over the printing of their work and to receive some financial recompense, so that this would encourage them to write more books and thus to aid the flow of ideas and learning. As the act itself says: 'for the encouragement of learned men to compose and write useful books'." http://en.wikipedia.org... Without copyrights, the creative industry collapses, and lacks effectiveness. Thank you.