[kelnos]

Except it won't, because copyright infringement will never replace enough purchases to actually matter.

I don't think most people would say we should abolish copyright completely, but the current situation is just dumb. The copyright term is way too long. And having governments enforce a company's business model at the end of a gun is gross.

At most, there should be financial penalties for violations. Depriving someone of their freedom for making/selling tools that enable copyright infringement is messed up. As is making someone pay a quarter of their income in restitution for the rest of their life.

[s1artibartfast]

If left unchecked, copyright infringement without compete most digital goods and most markets. It has lower costs and less transaction friction. Why buy a Nintendo game if there was a ubiquitous platform offering free games for everything in the catalog.

Who would pay for a streaming service when you can get all content from all platforms for free.

Most people simply pay for their digital content now because it's easier. The only reason it's easier is because of enforcement actions against infringement

[DoItToMe81]

You can already get both for free openly now. It's not hard, you can just Google search it. It's vastly easier and safer now to torrent or pirate than it ever has been, due to proliferation of information on safe sites, and also due to trust systems that have sealed out people who'd spread malware in the past.

People pay for digital content because it is consistently updated and has quality standards that piracy sometimes does not.

[s1artibartfast]

You're a contradicting yourself. It is not currently as easy to get high quality trustworthy pirated content as it is to log into Disney Plus or Netflix. If you take away copyright protections, you would quickly see the rise of high trust high quality sources for pirated material. Someone could simply make a trustworthy streaming service that offered the catalogs of both companies and others in full quality and offer it for a fraction of the price because they don't have to pay to license or produce content. They could advertise on billboards and everywhere they want.