> Without copyright, for example, movies would have to recoup (most of) their production costs before ever showing the film to the public.
Kinda true, although lots of films make more money through merchandising than the box office.
But even in that situation, why can't movies be funded by crowdsourcing? I'm sure there's lots of fans of LoTR who'd be happy to crwodfund The Hobbit, for example.
In a copyright-free world, that merchandise could be made by anyone; there's no guarantee that any merchandising money will make it back to the movie's creators.
Crowdfunding can be a viable option, but paying large sums of money before any work is done makes it tempting to abscond with most of the money and produce either an inferior or nonexistent product. How would you prevent this from happening on a regular basis? Would your solution make it too risky to attempt large projects out of fear of them not being deemed "good enough"?
If you allow trademarks on the characters and such, you end up in a worse position than when you started: Nobody can reproduce the original work or create any kind of derivative work without permission. This lasts in perpetuity as long as it is defended, and permission will likely never be given out of a belief that the trademark needs to be protected.
In other words, you're free to do anything you want with the Harry Potter movies, so long as you remove all instances of the name "Harry Potter" and all likenesses of Daniel Radcliffe wearing a robe?
I'm describing how trademark works. And yes, it does a lot of that.
Mind you, the trademark owner can authorize things. And I think there is even some analog of fair use for trademarks, but you should consult with a lawyer if you ever have more than an academic interest in such things.
The ability of trademarks to protect against commercial re-use of intellectual property isn't a good measure of how much they can replace copyright protection. If I write a fantastic book, trademark protection isn't going to help protect me from someone just duplicating it wholesale and changing the name.
Bad things are done in the name of copyrights (and patent protection). That doesn't invalidate the whole concept, it just means reform may be needed.
Kinda true, although lots of films make more money through merchandising than the box office.
But even in that situation, why can't movies be funded by crowdsourcing? I'm sure there's lots of fans of LoTR who'd be happy to crwodfund The Hobbit, for example.