These are all great examples of where it is debatable whether copyright is useful. But I think there are fairly clearly some much more difficult cases to dismis

These are all great examples of where it is debatable whether copyright is useful. But I think there are fairly clearly some much more difficult cases to dismiss so easily. The biggest, strongest example is pharmaceuticals. It costs hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a new drug and get it through the approvals process. It costs almost nothing to copy the drug once its developed. Without the protection of copyright, nobody in their right mind would invest the money it takes to develop new pharmaceuticals. There are lots of important debates to be had about how pharmaceutical companies game that system in practice, and whether or not we should tweak the rules to make that harder. However, it seems undeniable to me that pharmaceutical innovation would completely grind to a halt if copyright were abolished.