If everyone downloaded, the outcome would be the same. No content would be produced if nobody was compensated for it. Some of us want to support the production studies creating the things we value. Some of us understand that we live in a society.
I would like to see a cultural shift away from the idea, that one must go through some middleman to make and publish anything, towards the idea, that if you have a great project and you put yourself out there and people believe in your idea, they will support you and all of society reaps the benefits. We would become more a society of choice and self-informing, than a society of maximized consumption.
At the same time, I think in many areas there is still a long way to go, to achieve that cultural shift.
These middleman, as all, come from a practical need, not cultural one. The people creating the content usually have no interest or skill in making marketing material, setting up meetings with venues, handle IP infringement/lawsuits, and all the other mind numbing boring stuff that these publishing studies handle that takes time away from their actual skill. I think the obvious outcome is that this middleman is automated, and split, but again, that's not a cultural shift, that's a practical one.
This is not true. Many if not most artists create art because they enjoy it.
What is true is that middle men like publishers and record labels wouldn’t exist if nobody paid for content. Coincidentally, they are also the ones who push the lie that nobody would make content if they weren’t paid.
Why is it so common to assume that no artist who is compensated for their work creates art because they enjoy it? You're presenting a false dichotomy.
Quality content takes time, effort and money, even when you love what you're doing. Every creative industry is littered with the corpses of the careers of brilliant, passionate artists who couldn't afford to live on goodwill alone. Compensation is what allows artists the freedom and capability to do what they love.
I don't think many people will deny that compensation encourages more creation. That is in fact the basis for copyright (at least in the US) - to romote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. But that does not mean that the current copyright scheme is the best way of achieving more creation. In many ways it stifles creation as much as it encourages it.
Yes, we need to make it so that those who create can afford to live. But why do we need to so heavily restrict everyone elses rights to share and then throw public funds into enforcement of that insanity in order to achieve that? Really, we should make it so that everyone can affort to live instead and encourage creation via public and community funding or private patronage directly instead of doing this copyright dance where middlemen profit off our shared culture.
The sci-fi author Charlie Stross has a series of blog posts on their site about all the work that goes into publishing a book and how much of it is done by employees of the publisher (and how that is not work that Stross can do / would like to do).
> Also, lots of people, including many artists, like the stability of a steady pay check
I'm sure many plumbers would like recurring royalties from their work too. That doesn't mean that that is a good way for society to function. Any discussion of copyright that just looks at the needs of the creators without considering the effects on everyone else is fundamentally flawed.
History shows otherwise but even if that was true: Free (re)distribution does not inherently mean that the creator is not compensated in some way.