[burgerbrain]

If it were really necessary (though I am unconvinced that it is) a royalty system could likely be emulated in a society with no copyright with contract and corporate law.

Write a song for Metallica? Sell it to them in exchange for some amount of cash up front, and partial ownership in the company that is selling that particular album/single/whatever.

Clumsy perhaps, but if big money is involved the overhead should be minimal.

[dhimes]

The problem with selling to Metallica is that you are selling something that you don't "own." Said another way, the value changes when you can offer exclusivity. It'll be worth less to the company producing the music if someone else can (legally) take the music also.

Now I wouldn't cry if the era of multi-million-dollar entertainers is over, but I think that it would be a mistake to throw all copyright out. Rework it maybe, but keep the idea that mental creations are assets just like physical creations are. The concept of copyright arose because there appeared to be a need to protect those rights when that protection was absent, so I would be very hesitant to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes time to reexamine our IP laws.

For me, the SOPA/PIPA issue is about due process. Taking a site offline can be damaging in ways that may be hard to quantify, so the standard of proof should be pretty high IMO.