A recent report by the IT Industry about the breadth of fair use (via boingboing) states that industries that are built upon fair use constitute around one sixth of the US gross domestic product, and a total of 4.7 trillion US$. While this number contains industries like consumer electronics (which rely on the Sony v. Universal fair use decision) and photocopiers, it is quite clear that stronger copyright laws may kill these industries. In contrast, the copyright industry generates only 4.6% of the US GDP, and that’s according to the RIAA, which usually tends to have some statistical problems.

So it could be that stronger copyright actually means less creativity.