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Comment by alexwebb2 | Hacker News Reader

If we go that route, then doesn't that remove almost all financial incentive to produce new content that could be digitally stored / copied / recreated?

Because as soon as you create it and try to sell it for $1, someone else will recreate it instantly and put it up for $0.50, and so on until the value of all non-physical works is effectively $0 the moment after creation.

Feels like that would result in way less human art being made.

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The copies are non-scarce, but the production effort is indeed scarce. That's why alternatives to copyright tend to focus more on funding projects before they are released, such as patronage, commissions and public funding [1]. There's also the comically named "hostage funding" where you have a finished project, but you only release it after a certain funding goal is met.

It's worth noting that copyright is rather destructive since it impairs people from building and innovating on previous works [2], so any benefits need to be weighed against that.

[1] https://youtu.be/mnnYCJNhw7w?si=UzmBasgylpxomUAt

[2] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.en.html

If you create a painting someone else reproduces instantly with ease then it would imply the quality was not high enough to command the price. If incentive falls then supply would fall and either find a new equilibrium price or demand would remain and prices would rise.

Seems more like quality would matter. Hard copies would matter; perhaps the disc you issue your media on is rated to last 100 years, whereas someone's digital copy can be deleted with a keystroke.

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