Copyrights

Question - Should a free market have copyright laws and if so to what extent? What incentive does this give to produce new products?

Response - I think copyright laws may be written to serve an efficient purpose. They may, as you hint at, create strong incentives to be creative by protecting the creator of the work from having his ingenuity 'stolen' from him by copycats. Piracy may certainly lessen the desire to place one's creations into the open market if they are going to be permitted to be copied and distributed without compensation by the pirates. The problem with copyrights comes when/if they are permitted to transform into perpetuities. If the author/artist/musician/etc.'s heirs and the heirs of those heirs ad infinitum are permitted to limit the use of the copyrighted material, then the copyright becomes an obstacle to creativity.

I do not think it would be unreasonable to limit the copyright to the life (however long or short it may be) of the original creator. After that, the work should be permitted to enter the public domain so it can be used by future creators without penalty.