(I think that the violent movies would actually get better, since directors would get to do them purely for theater viewing and ignore the DVD market.)

At the margin, a proposal to revoke or weaken copyright for certain forms of expression that were considered objectionable might have a small impact on the overall volume of that activity, but not much. In the case of pornography, it would be negligible; almost non-existent. In the case of violent fare, we might not get “Friday the 13th, Part 8,” but we’d still get a lot of other slasher flicks. Whether we got something really creative (and expensive to produce) like a Tarantino or Robert Rodriquez flick is another story, and an issue worth debating. (I’m assuming that most of their movies would be exempt from copyright protection under Don’s proposal).

But this is all irrelevant to me. The principle of the matter is simple: We should not allow the government to use copyright as a tool of censorship, regardless of how effective it would be in practice.

Adam, haven’t you just endorsed the view of the David Levines of the world here? If the effect of revoking copyright would merely be that “not quite as much content would be produced,” why have copyright at all?

To the contrary, I think Don’s proposal would have a strong negative impact on the market for violent works, which is precisely why I’m opposed to it. I don’t want to put the government in charge of picking and choosing whose content is worthy of copyright protection and whose isn’t.

The reality is that violent movies and games get produced because there exists strong ongoing demand for such fare. There always has. Go back and read the debates Plato and Aristotle had about violence in Greek tragedies. It’s an old story.

Now it may be the case that not quite as much of that content would be produced if copyright was revoked, but it’s quite another thing to argue that such material would just go away. Not gunna happen.