That's nonsense. You'd see better quality software, and less monopolies that actively stand in the way of innovation and healthy competition.
I wasn't particularly convinced by the reference to Adam Smith's economic opinions, so you can probably imagine that schoolboy fantasy economics aren't going to impress me. You probably had a few teenage Linux fans running off to grab a box of kleenex though.
You don't think China has any software developers?
What does that have to do with anything? Are chinese software developers somehow prohibited from making money outside of China?
I never said anything about abandoning IP protection wholesale, just moderating it to make it more realistic.
I don't think you specified one way or another, but if you weren't others ( well one other, at least ) were. It's pretty hard to judge from ambiguous comments, but since you clarified that with a suggestion of 10 years, I do at least have something to work from.
Let's indulge you though
I think patronise is the word you were looking for. From ten years to four hundred is pretty much textbook definition of the sublime to the ridiculous.
What would be so bad about a say 10 year copyright on video game software?
I already explained why above. If you were talking about limiting this to explicit resources within the work ( art, code, sound, etc ) then it might be possible, but it would be seriously splitting some legal hairs to have a story and characters copyrighted for 70 years after death in a book and 10 years after creation in a videogame. Again, you're just going to drive talent out of the industry. No professional writer is going to work in videogames if their work is devalued to such an extent simply because it's presented via a particular medium. Not to mention how much fun lawyers would have with games and books that crossed over.