I wish Elizabeth Stark would read this- comments from Nick Carr on how lowered barriers to production may not enrich culture, it just creates more bad art. http://weblog.ipcentral.info/archives/2006/12/social_producti.html.

...and as we may all know, the free culture movement is the revolution you couldn't give away for free.

"2) For every musician in a developing country "thriving" in an environment where copyright is barely enforced, there are a bunch of others who can't make a living. Not to mention the difficulties of visual artists, craftspeople, textile artists and so on whose work is not amenable to being funded by the throwing of enormous parties."

Most artists, especially the crafts people you mention, don't really need copyright as much as you think they do. Bespoke items are exactly that, and the artist/craftsman is paid for their work in creating them.

Musicians have benefited for a time by the ability to 'industralize' their work, mass produce and mass market such items as CD's. Suppose that era is coming to an end (and I doubt that it is really ending, we have just reached an inflection point in the economics of this industrialisation of craft-made objects) In such a case musicians will be able to fallback on their night jobs: doing gigs.

YEs, they will not make as much money. Yes, the hangers on, the marketers, lawyers, agents etc will all lose fees. Too bad.

But your alternative, which requires massive government intervention, ala DMCA, is wrong both from a free-market perspective and a human rights perspective.