Btw, not a fan of "but what about the kids" rhetoric: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children
Nothing was stolen- just copied.
This typical semantic-pedantry line from piracy apologists misses the point - piracy is theft-adjacent even if you get to pick your use of "theft". Incidentally, my definition of "theft", and that of most content creators, includes the act of consuming something without compensating the creator on their terms - which includes piracy.
Now you may believe the incredibly self-serving baloney from big companies like Google. You may want to pretend that infringement isn't theft. To you, I hope that some homeless kid breaks into your home, starts squatting, and says that, "Hey, this isn't theft. Nothing has been destroyed."
cool thing about information is when you make a copy, you've doubled the information - plenty for everyone! if only housing worked the same way
People write for reasons other than money from the sales of the book. This accounts for most authors, who aren't famous enough to negotiate a great deal with a publisher.
And we don't need to abolish copyright outright. Just require that it is continually published at a steady or decreasing price, or it becomes public domain. And put works in the public domain a little sooner.
Yes, wealthy aristocrats wrote whatever they wanted and less wealthy authors wrote what they got paid to write by their wealthy aristocrat patrons.
Copyright and the publishing industry changed that to make it possible to live by writing for ordinary people.
Its disgustingly dishonest to appeal for "poor" authors where casual glance immediately proves that modern IP law exceedingly profits only a few massive corporations and their shareholders.
Yes, people write for other reasons (e.g., self-promotion). But that does not account for "most authors" I would actually want to read.
I'm not against copyright being different, especially for things that are written as work-for-hire. But that's a fight with Disney. Good luck.
No, it was established to make investing in printing presses more profitable, which is why the rights initially attached to printers. Authors as the locus of rights were a later change.
While removing copyright without some form of mechanism to replace it would be problematic, and I do agree there are second order effects to consider, at least for books the effect may well be less than you'd think.