Do you currently feel that the existence of libraries is contributing to that purported underproduction?
Maybe you should redefine your "normal" level of production? There are two, valid, competing concerns here, that of the content producer and that of society. After all, the point of copyright, according to the US constitution is to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Allowing content producers to make money is merely a means to that end, not an end onto itself.
> Do you currently feel that the existence of libraries is contributing to that purported underproduction?
Not really. I don't think it overlaps enough to cause much of a problem. They don't have the ease of use that downloading stuff does.
> Maybe you should redefine your "normal" level of production?
Without any IP laws, you could, in a thought-experiment world, spend millions of dollars to create a movie, release it, and not make one dime back on it. That would be the last such movie produced. That's "underproduction".
> Allowing content producers to make money is merely a means to that end, not an end onto itself.
Oh, I agree completely with that. Historically, it's been a pretty good means to that end as well. Lately, many cracks are appearing in the foundations, but I have yet to read of a convincing replacement for it. I think things like MacOS, Hollywood movies (well, some of them), and books by professional authors are a good thing for the world, and am not sure that amateurs will replace them.
> Without any IP laws, you could, in a thought-experiment
> world, spend millions of dollars to create a movie,
> release it, and not make one dime back on it. That would
> be the last such movie produced. That's "underproduction".
This is technically true, but IP laws don't provide any guarantee to the contrary. They are irrelevant to that thought experiment. Copyright does not guarantee profit.
There's a decent argument to be made that this would happen more often without IP laws, but then you're moving away from the thought-experiment world. Doing that makes it not clear-cut.
All of this is anything but clear-cut. However, I think that in a no-IP world, producing 'commercial' movies as we now know them would be far trickier.
Of course copyright does not 'guarantee' profit: you can make a shitty movie and lose money. However it provides some protection for content producers and indicates a fairly clear path to making money: make something and sell it.
Libraries are different in that they don't remove scarcity, giving a value proposition for both purchasing the book and the library option, if the books are borrowed out further people are unable to read the book at the same time.
A digital example where there is a balance would be iOS, you don't see big antipiracy efforts from developers because there is plenty of market happy to pay for goods.
The real issue is when a content producer can't make anything at all on their time/ money investment, libraries on the whole have never caused this the way digital downloads may.
Point 1, by this logic, I would be more likely to buy a new DVD release of a movie if the video rental store was currently out of stock of said movie to rent.
I would think people would be with point one, more so with books at a library where the wait is usually going to be longer than a day. That app you liked does support the current logic of most iOS developers, the high piracy lead to higher sales so it's not worth doing anything about. If at some point in the future though the piracy made sales so low as to not make the investment in making the app worth wild then you have a problem.
I use the words artists and content producers interchangeably, I guess thinking in terms of the word artist makes their work sound more unique and valuable than content producer.
Maybe you should redefine your "normal" level of production? There are two, valid, competing concerns here, that of the content producer and that of society. After all, the point of copyright, according to the US constitution is to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Allowing content producers to make money is merely a means to that end, not an end onto itself.