I mean, the obvious alternative is simply "no copyright". The world existed before it, and people created things without it.
Anyways, less extreme would be that we could go back to reasonable copyright terms as existed a hundred years ago. It seems likely at this point that our current 'experiment' with extreme copyright enforcement is going to produce an entire 100+ year range where the only works that will survive will be those owned by massive corporations who hold perpetual ownership of the work instead of their actual creators.
These "industries" forget that public domain is the default. It's natural, it's just how things are. Copying is not just trivial, it is natural. People infringe copyright every single day without even realizing what they are doing.
The fact is society is doing them a huge favor by pretending their works are scarce. In return they abuse our good will and erode our public domain rights. All we have to do is stop pretending. Start treating everything as public domain. That ought to be enough of a reality check to an industry that thinks it can monopolize numbers for hundreds of years.
Nobody cares how much money they spent to make stuff either. They don't get to deny reality just because they spent money.
Not parent, but if you ask me[0]: nothing. The world is not starved for creative content, there is little reason to continue incentivizing its creation so massively. People have shown quite willing to continue creating even while receiving nothing at all for their trouble, and we can always donate money to the people who's work we want to support.
Yes, it means no more Disney movies or AAA games. I'm personally quite ok with that.
[0] This is largely for the sake of argument, although I do definitely lean this direction.
A society that provides for its people without restricting freedom of information.
There's nothing wrong with protecting trade secrets, etc. but that is the onus of the secret holder to employ proper security measures. If someone assaults those measures, you prosecute them for those specific assaults (physical, cyber, etc).
But you don't prosecute people merely for being in possession or distributing "intellectual property" i.e. ideas and symbols. Only a backwards society would allow that.
The alternative is people figure out a way to get paid before or while they're creating. Because after the work is done and published, it's over. Artificial scarcity isn't gonna save creators anymore.
