Hi!

I found a typo, I suspect you meant, enterprise subscription.

Weird. Every author I'm aware of writes their books for an actual living.

The recipe itself isn’t protected by copyright but the rest of a cookbook is. E.g. their writings about the recipe and the photography. Usage of one’s likeness is also subject to protection. E.g. you can’t market a cookbook on Amazon as Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa even if the contents of the book are exactly her recipes. I don’t think it’s a good analogy.

They're not making a living from that comment, and they are worried that authors will not be able to make a living from their writings.

Taking a big step back, I guess that question is: Do we value people who write enough that we want some full time writers? We can then structure our society accordingly.

Books of recipes are copyrightable though. You can use a recipe, but you can't just copy the book and sell it as your own. What you can't copyright is a simple set of instructions, which is what a recipe is.

Not sure where you get the idea that comments can't be copyrighted. As far as I know, if they are original works of authorship in a tangible medium, and you don't agree to waive that right in the terms of service, you own the copyright. In other words, the usual tests of whether something can be copyrighted.

In any case, comparing comments, recipes, and books as though they were the same thing doesn't make sense to me. I'd like to hear the ways in which they are equivalent, and why authors of novels should be stripped of their current right to claim the sole right to make copies of their own work.

They established early copyright because publishers would just print copies of books and never pay the authors at all. The middlemen aren't going to do it voluntarily, and if they do, they'll be undercut by those that don't.