I'm aware this is an uphill battle. It may well be a hill I choose to die on.
For further thoughts / arguments:
Many of the arguments for Sci-Hub generalise to all information. This piece also specifically invokes the arguments of the CUNY Graduate Center and Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel laureate economist) on information as a public good:
"What the academic publishing industry calls "theft" the world calls "research": Why Sci-Hub is so popular" https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4p2rwk/what_th...
Generally:
"Why Information Goods and Markets are a Poor Match" https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2vm2da/why_inf...
"The Medium Is the Message: how the technological and revenue environments shape content" https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/278e2o/the_med...
"Forbes asks: Why do programmers hate advertising so much?" https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/24107v/forbes_...
"A Modest Proposal: Universal Online Media Payment Syndication" https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1uotb3/a_modes...
"Specifying a Universal Online Media Payment Syndication System" https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2h0h81/specify...
"Richard Stallman's "Internet Sharing" content syndication proposal (2012)" https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3p0bp6/richard... https://stallman.org/articles/internet-sharing-license.en.ht...
A general problem of advertising, not otherwise addressed, is that it tends to produce shit content. Though this essay doesn't directly address that, it's very much a Tyranny of the Minimum Viable User dynamic: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyr...
Another is that advertising tends strongly toward oppressive rather than liberating informational regimes: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6b32jo/what_ma...
And problems with other proposed payment alternatives, such as micropayments:
"Repudiation as the micropayments killer feature (Not)" https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4r683b/repudia...
A general bibliography on publishing and media:
"Media, Advertising, Sustainability, Externalities, and Impacts: A light reading list" https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7k7l4m/media_a...
TL;DR: I've been thinking about this for a while.
Mind: getting to public goods payment is going to be difficult. I don't deny that in the least. Partial approaches may well be a viable path there. Sci-Hub, ZLibrary, Library Genesis, the Internet Archive, libraries (public, offline, online), file-sharing, samizdat press, #pdfme, and other measures are appropriate.
And "how do authors/creators" get paid: UBI/GMI would be a good start. Performance/lectures are an option. Publishing-as-a-shingle (in the professional advertising sense) is an option. Patronage and grants are presently used and have a long and storied history. As discussed in the essays above, both technology and business model effect the forms and types of works created. Advertising has been tried and found wanting.