What would the world be like without copyright? A world where culture and art develop freely, a world where people involved earn their freedom and bucks - a better world, says Professor Joost Smiers. Without copyright, he says, arts and cultures would develop more rapidly and freely. The oligarchical copyright practices of the arts world, in books, films and music should be reduced, he says. Smiers, now a professor emeritus at Utrecht School of the Arts, Netherlands, questions the effectiveness of using economic arguments to justify copyright, the rationale that protecting the right of the artist fuels their creativity. Art blurs the notion of originality as artistic creations draw upon inspiration from many different sources. The protection that copyright grants is becoming obsolete in a world where technology has made the sharing of information so easy and fast,...