What “renaissance” would result from not having copyright?
It seems to me that history is showing the opposite. It’s easier than ever, thanks to technology, to make original movies, songs, etc. But demand for specific creations is more concentrated than ever.
Of all of the types of property, copyright seems to me the least offensive. It’s not like the dirt I built my house on, which is finite, and which which I had no hand in creating. There is an infinite amount of original works, all you need to do is make your own.
Disney itself was built on the back on works in the public domain. Snow White, Pinocchio, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, The Jungle Book and Robin Hood were all based on public domain works.
Why would any renaissance occur if copyright didn't exist? You'd be eliminating financial incentive to produce interesting new work. If those financial incentives weren't required, we'd already have those works today.
Here’s another example: during the Victorian era, Alfred, Lord Tennyson revived interest in The Matter of Britain (King Arthur, Lancelot, etc.) by publishing, over several decades, what would become The Idylls of the King.
Thence T. H. White, thence Mary Stewart, thence Marion Bradley (an otherwise wretched person), thence that terrible Sam Neill vehicle, thence. . .
All of this to say there’s a flaw in your logic: financial incentives are not the only reason people create new things. Financial incentives in fact destroy other artistic incentives, and so we already lack the works that would have been created in their absence. The proof of this is the graveyard of Netflix series canceled in the second season.
(P.S.: Ah, here, in the acknowledgements to _The Mists of Avalon_: "Finally, I must express loving gratitude to my husband, Walter Breen, who said, at a crucial moment in my career, that it was time to stop playing it safe by writing potboilers, and provided financial support so that I could do so. . ." A potboiler is a book written to cater to the popular taste, so that the writer might earn a living.)
This really depends on how many degrees of freedom the media has. For music the copyright laws are way too strict, for books and software it seems fine.
It seems to me that history is showing the opposite. It’s easier than ever, thanks to technology, to make original movies, songs, etc. But demand for specific creations is more concentrated than ever.
Of all of the types of property, copyright seems to me the least offensive. It’s not like the dirt I built my house on, which is finite, and which which I had no hand in creating. There is an infinite amount of original works, all you need to do is make your own.