My studies have shown me that copyrights and patents or rather copyright and patent enforcement are destructive to the world in general. They temporarily benefit a small few while oppressing most everyone else.
1. Copyrights and patents prevent technological progression from happening fast and even happening at all. It can even drive people to revert to using older and inferior technology if someone decides to be mean or greedy and enforce their copyright and patent 'rights'.
2. It is easily used as a tool by elites to land people in prison merely because they personally don't like that person or because that person is against their philosophical beliefs not even related to copyright or patent philosophy directly.
3. It keeps many people jobless or working poor jobs. For example a person who could be mass producing some valuable and life-saving medication may instead use his money to build himself a new home and buy a car, and then end up working at McDonald's or even homeless should his home burn down. But if he had lived in some cheap apartment, spent his money on a drug business making some cancer drug, he could employ many workers, be a ceo and expand his business. You may think, "Well without copyright and patent people would just face competition from others for the same stuff so it would cancel out the benefits" however that would forget the competition factor. In the face of such competition with such a large population as America's, with decent business laws not including copyright and patent laws, someone wins out and often has a superior and more affordable product. They may at first be making an already available generic cancer drug, but during the competition produce something better in order to stay in business. The huge pharmaceuticals in power now deliberately delay producing more effective drugs because they like to play it safe and conserve their money while making as much profit as possible. That is not good for anyone but the shareholders and even the shareholders are suffering in a sense since they could possibly be making much more money if they would improve their products or sell completely new and better ones.
4. Copyright and patent enforcement wastes money and time. Tax payers end up paying for lengthy trials which end up profiting not necessarily the patent and copyright owners, but the person with the most money who is suing or being sued.
5. It's impossible to enforce. Some argue that if people are stealing hard goods all the time should we just let them do it? Jesus would say to just let yourself be stolen from (although allows for the possibility of complaining to the authorities) but to compare stealing hard goods to information is a poor comparison. The reason is because information is 'stolen' infinitely more than hard goods. The number of copyrighted things being downloaded and copied is way way more then the theft of hard goods stolen each day, unless you want to include kids taking their parents' food and pocket change without permission, but I doubt that even comes close to the amount of copyrighted things being copied each HALF-HOUR let alone day. I know this from personal research. So, should the entire world (minus poor countries to poor to download no thanks to greedy and lazy big businesses) be arrested so that the rich can get richer and the poor more poor to the point of them being murderous rebels?
I believe that musicians and artists and inventors can, without copyright and patent laws, make a good living. They have the possibility of getting donations, or playing their music live, doing artistry before their viewers, continuing to paint (rather then being lazy and trying simply to live off royalties), and inventors, rather than hoping for or relying on royalties, would instead be offered a huge one lump some of cash or steady payments over time regardless of the sales of their invention or not. To me, trying to live off royalties is like someone claiming they own some new dance move, and that anyone making money off it owes them money. Or imagine a teacher telling his students they will owe him or his children money for the rest of their lives if they profit off what they've learned from him, it's absurd, complicated to the point of impossibility, and everyone would end up being poor in the end, or their would be a profit of zero from everyone passing on money repeatedly to give everyone their never-ending royalties.
Related info:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=600802
http://www.tinaja.com/glib/casagpat.pdf
http://libertariannation.org/a/f31l1.html
