I think the broader question here is if whether "intellectual property" should exist at all. In principle, it can be argued that it protects and rewards innovation and research by granting a monopoly on "ideas" in a broad sense. But in practice, this protection seems to be far too broad and ends up protecting rents instead, and hindering derivative work. What I have in mind here is companies suing developers that reverse engineer a program or protocol to provide a free/libre implementation for example. There is absolutely no doubt people would still write books or software, conduct medical research or even make video games or movies without IP/copyright laws. The monetization strategy would need to change (e.g. game developers could charge for playing on their "official" server), but I don't think things would otherwise be vastly different. Many countries already don't enforce U.S. copyright laws and freely copy drugs, movies, and software. Profits of big tech/pharma/media would go down no doubt, but I don't feel sorry for them.
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