True, this is a valid point. I’m under the impression that it has been studied, though I don’t have a source off the top of my head. It’s definitely been debate

True, this is a valid point. I’m under the impression that it has been studied, though I don’t have a source off the top of my head. It’s definitely been debated vigorously and often. Anyway, keep in mind that this net benefit needs to incentivize people to get over the static friction of starting in the first place. We don’t want to make a point of handing content and ideas over to incremental producers because that will disincentivize people from trying in the first place. Also important is that part of the net benefit to society is a trickle-down argument that we need to reward the authors first in order for society to reap the net benefit. The point is not to encourage business at the fastest possible speed be letting people borrow the ideas and inventions and content of others, the point is to protect the people who do the actual original work for a reasonable period of time, and to allow for the fact that they might be less good at business than someone who’s only reselling content. Might be worth stating that study the economics of social net benefits is incredibly difficult, and can take a very, very long time, longer than you and I have left. The environment is a great example of how we’ve made disastrous business choices that were rationalized by “social benefit”, but turned out to be wrong.