Originally Posted by
memebag
If you don't support legal protection for intellectual property then you are willing to allow anyone else to take the content of your novel and sell it as their own. Legal fiction and the threat of violence is what lets people profit from their work when their work is easy to copy. Take the fiction and violence away and the incentive to create easily copied things (like books, movies, software, processes, etc.) is greatly diminished.
I disagree. There are plenty of more creative ways to monetize thought capital, and there are lots of examples of IP laws stifling innovation. Just look at patent trolls; whole companies set up to do nothing other than use our IP laws to extract value from true innovators. The pharmaceutical industry is another great example of the failure of IP laws. There are lots more. IP laws don't do as much to protect innovators as people are led to believe.