Shrub repeats a common myth:
Intellectual property laws are put in place to maintain scarcity of the commodity and dominion & control and if the creator is not assured control over his creation then you stiffle creativity as there are no longer any meaningful incentives to create.
This is a common myth and a wildly silly one. First, the great majority of the greatest artistic works of mankind were produced prior to the existence of IP. The IP era has produced few great writers, few great musicians and almost no great painters, mostly because IP transfers power from the producers to the publishing corporations which always reduce things to the lowest common denominator.
Second, people do not create for primarily financial reasons. It is estimated that 100 books are written for every book that is published. Of those books that are published, only a small percentage provide the creator with an income above the poverty level. The elimination of IP might harm the Stephen Kings of the world but would counter-intuitively benefit those authors who are currently shut out by the IP-dependent gatekeepers.
Technological advances are also not dependent upon IP. Consider how quickly tech goods are reverse-engineered and cheap knockoffs are produced. Apple’s IPod sales are not dependent upon IP, they are dependent upon people’s desire to own an IPod from Apple. If anything, eliminating IP would speed up the pace of innovation, as companies could not depend on using the threat of government force to inhibit competition.
And before you ask how I’d feel about my books being distributed freely in electronic format, please understand that I asked the vice-publisher of Pocket Books to publicly announce the free download of my books from their web site two years ago. They declined, unfortunately, but I anticipate being able to convince them in the future.