I strongly agree that harm is relative, and that the relative harm of infringement must be balanced against the potential harms of any enforcement mechanism (with significant room for error on the side of under-enforcement).
I strongly object to the idea that IP rights are only real to the extent that they are a) granted by the state and b) encourage additional creative effort. Utilitarianism is a great model for a democratic society to use when encoding things into legislation, but isn't a great "be all" for ethical theory or ontology.
Your test and request are problematic. If there is a creative work that might have been produced but wasn't, for the reason you'd like me to somehow cite evidence for, by what search method (other than knowledge of my own personal creative endeavors) should I seek out such an example? And if I pluck from my own experience, what would constitute evidence that the actual reasons for non-production are what I claim them to be?
I would bet there are thousands of bedroom-class electronic music producers who never devote a ton of effort to their talents because of the rate at which music is pirated. The number of hours it takes to become passable at production is quite large, even with great tools. And even if they become accomplished, they have no great hope of turning that accomplishment into gigs or recordings that pay a living wage, precisely because piracy became so rampant that people now expect new artists to give away their first EP-worth for free or under a "pay what you want" scheme.
The world has decided that the fruit of those first 1000-4000 hours shouldn't cost anything. You're telling me that doesn't have a chilling effect on people deciding whether or not to spend that kind of time?
"But see," I imagine you saying, "Now we only get artists who were willing to do Whatever It Takes to become great!" Yeah well, a lot of those folks suck compared to some other guy who had a family and a mortgage to think about; you'll just never hear that guy.
> I strongly object to the idea that IP rights are only real to the extent that they are a) granted by the state and b) encourage additional creative effort.
Then you'll have to amend the Constitution. Or you could try to make the argument that the 1st amendment supersedes the Article 2 authority to establish copyright. Some people are doing that, but I'm pretty sure they're going to lose.
> If there is a creative work that might have been produced but wasn't, for the reason you'd like me to somehow cite evidence for, by what search method (other than knowledge of my own personal creative endeavors) should I seek out such an example?
By the same methodology that you use to do any market research: ask people in the industry. There is ample precedent for this sort of thing. For example, the production of small general aviation aircraft more or less ceased during the 80's and 90's. It was pretty straightforward to show that the reason this happened was because of liability laws. These laws were changed in 1994, and now the production of light aircraft resumed.
I don't see an analogous shortage of movies. Quite the opposite: there seems to be an overwhelming glut on the market. The Sundance Film Festival got 8000 submissions for 100 openings. There's so much new music coming out that it's a full time job to keep up with it all. That seems to me like pretty compelling evidence that piracy is not much of an impediment to production.
I strongly object to the idea that IP rights are only real to the extent that they are a) granted by the state and b) encourage additional creative effort. Utilitarianism is a great model for a democratic society to use when encoding things into legislation, but isn't a great "be all" for ethical theory or ontology.
Your test and request are problematic. If there is a creative work that might have been produced but wasn't, for the reason you'd like me to somehow cite evidence for, by what search method (other than knowledge of my own personal creative endeavors) should I seek out such an example? And if I pluck from my own experience, what would constitute evidence that the actual reasons for non-production are what I claim them to be?
I would bet there are thousands of bedroom-class electronic music producers who never devote a ton of effort to their talents because of the rate at which music is pirated. The number of hours it takes to become passable at production is quite large, even with great tools. And even if they become accomplished, they have no great hope of turning that accomplishment into gigs or recordings that pay a living wage, precisely because piracy became so rampant that people now expect new artists to give away their first EP-worth for free or under a "pay what you want" scheme.
The world has decided that the fruit of those first 1000-4000 hours shouldn't cost anything. You're telling me that doesn't have a chilling effect on people deciding whether or not to spend that kind of time?
"But see," I imagine you saying, "Now we only get artists who were willing to do Whatever It Takes to become great!" Yeah well, a lot of those folks suck compared to some other guy who had a family and a mortgage to think about; you'll just never hear that guy.