This is a chicken and egg fallacy. You can't tell what would or would not be made in the absence of an incentive that has never not been provided.
> Would you rather they didn't have the option which would result in the effort not being expended to generate such information?
Yes, I would argue absolutely that valuable information would still be made because those that would benefit just from the information existing - not from the potential sale of said information - would still fund its creation. Someone that wants a painting will still pay for it if or if not they can sell the finished work. The think tank researching a cure for cancer will still have ample funding sources from those who think not having cancer would be beneficial regardless of those sponsors ability to profit off said cure.
> I don't understand how someone can argue that it is unfair that they have an option to do so if they choose.
Its largely a problem because its both default and implied. Its in the same class of problem as if the government tried to restrict air - you had to pay to breathe and are charged per-month. Despite the air being "free" and "everywhere". Its a tough analogy to write though, because there is no true analog to the modern miracle of information propagation being infinite and endless - we truly have nothing else worth so little as a copy of a number to compare it to.
But fundamentally its having your cake and eating it too - if you want to monetize your creations, you make them for free (at expense to yourself) to try to monetize something that has no value (copies of it). Its so abjectly opposed to reality and true scarcity that subconsciously drive people to feel no serious shame in piracy despite them "stealing theoretical profits from the rightsholder". But thats really all you are taking. In another light, a random stranger is offering you something for free and without recompense that they have, just because its so cheap to store, transmit, and replicate. That is magical. We take this modern miracle of technology and bind it in chains to try to perpetuate a model of profit that doesn't make any actual sense in actual reality given the scarce inputs (creative capability, motivation, and efforts) and infinite outputs (information) involved.
>You can't tell what would or would not be made in the absence of an incentive that has never not been provided.
You can though. Precisely because there are countries (past and present) that have / had no legal framework for such incentives, and there are others where the framework was there but the law is not enforced. And we can observe how it is working for them, compare and contrast. I live in one of them (lived here all my life) but work for countries that provide such a protection (precisely because my intellectual property would not be respected here, so my own country my homeland does not get to benefit from my work) so it is easy for me to look at both sides of the coin - though it is not strictly necessary. It doesn't take hands on experience to observe that the most productive and innovative countries occupying planet earth are those that have strong intellectual property rights.
There is a lot of low hanging fruit where I live that would double the GDP of the country in a few years but no one is doing it, because they are either capital intensive, or time intensive (or both) but without any protections there to make it worth your while it doesn't make sense to attempt those - for anyone. It makes more sense to pitch any innovative ideas to countries that will protect you so that you get a return proportional to the value you generate for the rest of the society. If I have an idea that has the potential to shave 1 hour off of millions of people's work everyday, that is enormous value generated for everyone and I should be rewarded proportionally. Not to mention the risk I'd have to take to attempt that, by attempting that I'm doing this instead of doing something else with my only life so of course the incentive HAS TO be there.
>The think tank researching a cure for cancer will still have ample funding sources from those who think not having cancer would be beneficial regardless of those sponsors ability to profit off said cure.
I think this is far too naive way of looking at it. You are taking risk entirely out of the equation. If I'm attempting to do something that is of value to other people, merely by attempting it, I am taking a RISK. My time is my most valuable asset, I only live once, and I'm willing to invest my time and capital into this endeavor instead of doing something else with them. The resources of human beings are not unlimited, so they need to have a heuristic / algorithm to ration their resources. Their survival / wellbeing is dependent on this. So something becomes a viable risk only if there is a possible return that makes sense. Like you wouldn't play coin flip for 1.1x or nothing right? It must at the very least be 2x or nothing to break even.
So we think we'd like to do good for no possibility of personal return, but behavioral economics show that humans do not operate that way (even though they'd like to think that they would) because each and every human being have their own lives, responsibilities, families, wants, wishes and only limited resources. To make ANYTHING the returns must be congruent with your heuristic about how you'd like to divide your limited resources.
> without any protections there to make it worth your while
You are still approaching it from the "make it for free, charge for the result" model incompatible with reality. If there is something worth doing that will radically improve society you should be soliciting the funding first before undertaking the labor.
Yes, risk is involved. You take risks when you pay someone to build a house for you. You take risks when you buy Sushi at the store that may or not still be good. We have, as a society, very effectively structured and produced buyer protections for services rendered ranging from guarantees to total free for all. You would, like with every other transaction, budget and account for risks and pay to mitigate them if warranted.
> It makes more sense to pitch any innovative ideas to countries that will protect you
Its more like foreign nations with IP laws are offering you a magic money machine that nations without don't, and the pile of gold is a tempting proposition over attempting alternative funding models.
> So something becomes a viable risk only if there is a possible return that makes sense
I don't think we are in any disagreement here. I'm never arguing that you abolish IP and expect all further scientific advancement, art, programming, etc to be done by people who cannot seek compensation for making it. I'm arguing that the US IP regime smothers any potential alternative with how exploitative having the government constrain information by law is.
Your story runs a similar thread seen in tax evasion and money laundering - the rich will gravitate their wealth towards wherever they can keep the most of it. That is where Swiss Bank Accounts and Latin American cartels get their power. Likewise businesses want lower taxes and thus gravitate towards the countries that offer the lowest tax rates - even if those lower tax rates have abject demonstrable harm to the citizenry through reduced social programs, etc. The result is that there is a global race to the bottom economically - to appeal maximally to wealth to attract it, or see your nation rot as it constantly flees your borders for greener pastures. IP is a massive pile of money to be had, hence nations without it see creators flee to nations with it, but might does not make right - just because the existence of IP represents untenable profit by any other means does not justify its existence, especially when it is so contrarian to baseline reality. Its a perversion of normality meant to attract investment the same way having low or no wealth and income taxes or no corporate tax attracts the wealthy and businesses.
> So we think we'd like to do good for no possibility of personal return
The personal return on funding the cure for cancer is having the cure for cancer exist.
> To make ANYTHING the returns must be congruent with your heuristic about how you'd like to divide your limited resources.
And macroeconomically we are all constituted of limited resources - limiting information compels most to partition their scarce resources towards affording the IP regime, not for any physical necessity, and this reduces the buying power of everyone involved. IP falls under the same purview of economic cancers as advertising, health insurance, and the military - bureaucracy and a race to the bottom that has no abject benefit but siphons productivity away to rent seekers and middle men.
> Would you rather they didn't have the option which would result in the effort not being expended to generate such information?
Yes, I would argue absolutely that valuable information would still be made because those that would benefit just from the information existing - not from the potential sale of said information - would still fund its creation. Someone that wants a painting will still pay for it if or if not they can sell the finished work. The think tank researching a cure for cancer will still have ample funding sources from those who think not having cancer would be beneficial regardless of those sponsors ability to profit off said cure.
> I don't understand how someone can argue that it is unfair that they have an option to do so if they choose.
Its largely a problem because its both default and implied. Its in the same class of problem as if the government tried to restrict air - you had to pay to breathe and are charged per-month. Despite the air being "free" and "everywhere". Its a tough analogy to write though, because there is no true analog to the modern miracle of information propagation being infinite and endless - we truly have nothing else worth so little as a copy of a number to compare it to.
But fundamentally its having your cake and eating it too - if you want to monetize your creations, you make them for free (at expense to yourself) to try to monetize something that has no value (copies of it). Its so abjectly opposed to reality and true scarcity that subconsciously drive people to feel no serious shame in piracy despite them "stealing theoretical profits from the rightsholder". But thats really all you are taking. In another light, a random stranger is offering you something for free and without recompense that they have, just because its so cheap to store, transmit, and replicate. That is magical. We take this modern miracle of technology and bind it in chains to try to perpetuate a model of profit that doesn't make any actual sense in actual reality given the scarce inputs (creative capability, motivation, and efforts) and infinite outputs (information) involved.