Um... how is it obvious? Because intellectual property laws don't seem to be stopping production of new material...
Are you saying there are a lot of people who would like to make stuff, but can't... because of intellectual property laws? Those same laws that would protect THEM if they made something?
And a LOT of people are making stuff. Web content, for example. Or selling books on the internet, directly to the consumer...
So, I'm not sure what intellectual property laws have to do with anything.
Intellectual property is a government sponsored monopoly. The rationale is that monopoly pricing enabled by patents, copyrights enable higher profits, motivating invention and creation. If you remember that trademarks and logos are also intellectual property it is immediately obvious that the rationale and the practice are
not the same thing.
Intellectual property laws as currently written permit producers, whose creative functions are distinctly secondary to writers (the conventional unwisdom is directors, but that's another can of worms) to seize the larger share of monopoly profits as well as manipulate availability of their legally entailed products from being available. And as written, copyrights can be renewed practically indefinitely, long after death. Elvis and The Beatles are not being motivated by monopoly profits to continue creating. Using a pop song in a montage can produce a nightmare of rights deals that keep product from availability.
The thing is, in the context of new media that can access creative products at little cost, these intellectual property laws are keeping many, many items unavailable, both inadvertently and as part of nefarious business strategy. It's not just a question of new products after all! These problems make no difference to amoralists who think all successful business strategy is admirable for its profitability of course.
Further, the bizarre extension of copyrights to merchandising means that megahits that spin off toys etc. are vastly more profitable than merely creative ventures. The desire for massive profits from blockbuster movies means that there is less money for regular movies, and a positive disincentive to create anything but the most popular forms of entertainment.
The more profits kept by the producers means less money for large numbers of creative people like writers and actors (and even directors,) which in this society means less incentive. Who knows how many talented actors and writers can't get work because they aren't box office, or can't even get enough work to keep up with the Joneses, much less get enough experience to perfect their talents.
The costs of delivering creative products are elevated by intellectual property laws. That is their purpose. Monopoly pricing reduces production in a capitalist economy. With the advent of very low cost delivery systems the disparity between monopoly pricing in the past and now is ever more extreme, and the distortions of the creative processes in entertainment just as much greater. Putting all creative products that can be delivered via internet, collecting a relatively small access fee, then divvying receipts according to a formula is probably the most rational solution. That is, in such a way as to actually maximize creativity, the professed goal of intellectual property laws.
The problem is that such a system will deliver lower profits to producers. This is consonant with the lower costs of production really. This will not be a problem for creativity because the creative people are not motivated solely by the money. Indeed, the ones who are most motivated by the money tend to be the least creative as near as I can tell.
In practice, the new business model will be the misuse of intellectual property laws to carve out select markets, leaving the consumer with the option of paying more for several services to have complete access or doing without. The limited markets will increase marketing costs, limiting production of new content to what can be most profitable in this limited market. The most profitable new content will be reality programming of various sorts. This trend is well advanced and there is no prospect of change. The business stooges will see to that.
