I sometimes enjoy a "big production movie", along the lines of Avatar (although I wasn't wild about that one), and think the world would be worse off without them.
Movies cost millions of dollars to produce. With no IP, we would be left with either movies produced by some rich patron or only by very low-budget amateurs, because otherwise, how do you recoup the money?
I am not sure why you are discussing wine; it is not a good analogy, as it is not an information good, and while you may feel that the "laws are all outdated", any reasoning about the purchase and distribution of wine is likely to not apply much to information goods.
You need to consider opportunity cost. What amazing things are we prevented from realising as a result of restrictive law and the practices it supports?
There was a time where the church could point to its awesome musical, architectural and wine traditions and say that they wouldn't exist without the strong forced support of the populace, land privileges, the right to cut the balls off young boys, education monopoly and other ludicrous concessions.
I'm a huge fan of the results of some these traditions, but there's more to life.
I think the parent post was very apt. Copyright and patents are both forms of protectionsim, like the Tennessee license laws he describes.
> What amazing things are we prevented from realising as a result of restrictive law and the practices it supports?
If you look at open source software, there's a lot of very good stuff out there, but it's not some amazing new world, really, except for the people who take it and use it, and give nothing back. They get a ton of value for free. That's ok, open source producers signed up to that world voluntarily, and in general, it sort of works out.
By taking away IP, you would force everyone to contribute their work for free to zillions of other people, thus collapsing the market - plenty of people contribute to open source for fun, but if they were forced to, a whole lot of people would get out of the software business.
Movies cost millions of dollars to produce. With no IP, we would be left with either movies produced by some rich patron or only by very low-budget amateurs, because otherwise, how do you recoup the money?
I am not sure why you are discussing wine; it is not a good analogy, as it is not an information good, and while you may feel that the "laws are all outdated", any reasoning about the purchase and distribution of wine is likely to not apply much to information goods.