People have a right to profit from their labor. Without IP that right vanishes for a lot of creative endeavors.
A few years ago I was working for GE's R&D center. They funded hundreds of research programs. Sometimes they resulted in viable products they can manufacture or license. Sometimes the research failed, or by the time the research was done there was no longer a market for it.
One of their projects was a glass plate that was sensitive to x-rays. It was designed to replace film for mammography. The resolution was almost as good as film, it had all the advantages of digital images over physical ones (easy to store, no deterioration, could be sent to a specialist via e-mail instantly, etc.), and as a bonus used less radiation, so it was safer for the patient.
They spent 30 million dollars and 7 years to prefect it.
Why would any company take that level of risk if a month after bringing it to market a competitor could reverse engineer it and sell it
without having to recoup that thirty million dollar investment? Since they did the work, shouldn't they get the profit, at least for a while?
If there were no IP, sure there would still be songs and books and poems, but how many $30 million inventions would we see?
Under no circumstances should IP be protected by law.
Then it won't be protected. There has to be a bottom line, an ultimate gun at the end of the line, or it's meaningless.
Where do guns come into in the free market?
As the last resort for dealing with a thief.
If I write a book I should be the one to profit from that book. You shouldn't be able to take my work, my labor, and produce it yourself and sell it at a profit, cutting me out of the loop. You shouldn't be able to make a movie out of it without me getting something in return for my labor.
If you want to argue that today's copyright and patent laws are outrageous and ridiculous, I'm with you. Allowing business practices to be patented is stupid. Allowing someone to patent using a laser pointer to entertain a cat is ridiculous. And "For a limited time" was not intended to be 170 years. And the draconian methods being used by the RIAA and the MPAA to protect their IP is not only stupid, but counterproductive. (In any business, theft is a fact of life, and good business people build the cost of it into their bottom line.) But the principle of
reasonable protection for IP is sound. The fact that it's become unreasonable doesn't invalidate the principle.
The founding fathers gave very very few powers to the federal government. Among them was the power to grant copyrights and patents. I happen to think they were smarter than you, or me, or anyone else on this board.