I'm not sure that's such a great argument. We'll all might be making less money if security improves, complexity decreases, more people learn to program etc. Doesn't make those bad things. I personally don't make money from selling consumer software nor have I ever worked for someone who does. My programming is in that regard more akin to performing.
Even as a fairly radical pirate I know that most people don't care about copyright, for or against. To the extent that people are against copyright it's mainly about absurd copyright terms, harsh punishment and general industry dysfunction. There's no basis for the idea to abolish copyright, essentially no one thinks that nor will it ever happen. It's scare tactics.
Also the scenario where authors can't control distribution has already happened and has been going on for years and years. From poems to professional software.
To be fair, it's not "all" in the sense of "all of us".
Many (frankly most) programmers are employed in positions where the revenue supporting their salary is not the sales of licenses to potentially copyable IP. I work for a hardware vendor. Web developers sell services and data access, etc...
I don't necessarily agree with the grandparent's position on copyright, but the content utopia those folks envision isn't actually implausible.
They work in a market alongside people whose compensation is entirely derived from intellectual property law. Their wages are driven up by compensation from those firms.
Which is true, though that gets to your use of "a lot" in the original.
To claim that content IP licensing pays for some programmers salaries is straightforward. To extend that to argue that salaries of all programmers are significantly higher needs numbers; it's not at all an obvious corrollary.
I don't directly profit from software IPR (I don't sell shrink-wrap). If software IP was indefensible, I think I'd lose more than 40% of my market value.
I don't think that the trend towards SaaS and IAP as primary revenue models is an accident - reliance on control of the distribution channel for a good with zero marginal cost is a losing proposition as internet access, speed, and reliability globally increases.
It seems to me that software markets are already moving in the direction of assuming that creators don't have control over distribution of digital goods.
I think opposition to proprietary software is as mainstream here as opposition to film copyrights. (Maybe we should have a poll to find out.)
(There are plenty of nuances of people's opposition, for example people who think arbitrary copyright licenses should still be enforceable but that it's mean to use a proprietary one.)
I know you all think it is, but it's not a matter of money. All the software I make is already freely distributable by its users, and that was an important reason why I chose this job.
I think I'll take the many tens of thousands of dollars in premium that intellectual property law allows my work to command in preference to the warm fuzzies I might get at the prospect of Zac Efron's "We Are Your Friends" being free and immediately available on my Macbook, which also would not exist without intellectual property law.
You are also turning down the uncountable amount of economic growth that would be stimulated by the relaxation of copyright and especially patent laws in the software industry.
I'd take that regardless of whether it comes with free access to movies, music and TV shows.
edit: I think it's debatable how much impact it would have of software developer salaries. The only way I see it causing a drop in salaries is if it causes a reduced demand for developers by increasing software development efficiency.
"which also would not exist without intellectual property law"
What about all the things that still would exist? Would all those things be worse? What about if we had strong data protection laws? Maybe all those celebrities wouldn't have been violated. On the other hand maybe Google wouldn't have existed at all or maybe that is if copyright had actually been enforced. Hm.
The point being that the only thing we can be certain about is that things have changed and are going to change. When do we reach a point were copyright has to be reformed and at which point of that reform doesn't Zac Efon get to make his movie?
I'm personally not sure that the entitlement of Zac Efron is a huge factor in my views on copyright.
Even as a fairly radical pirate I know that most people don't care about copyright, for or against. To the extent that people are against copyright it's mainly about absurd copyright terms, harsh punishment and general industry dysfunction. There's no basis for the idea to abolish copyright, essentially no one thinks that nor will it ever happen. It's scare tactics.
Also the scenario where authors can't control distribution has already happened and has been going on for years and years. From poems to professional software.