In pursuit of their business interests, not out of constraints inherent to writing/music/film/art.
Indeed, money is as inseparable from the most popular art forms as gravity is from rocketry. Entire mediums wax and wane in response to the flow of finance. Film, opera, books, television, to say nothing of architecture are almost evntierly defined by the commercial melieu. Mastery of this dimension provides the very cornerstone of professional accomplishment, since nothing else is possible without the requisite budget.
To the extent that time is money, every creative type who values the often considerable amount of time it takes to produce the work they want to produce understands the constraints of finance in their bones. They all do their best to do the most with what they can get. That a big part of the reason they get so frustrated with audiences who refuse to pay.
How can you possibly fail to recognize this?
Indeed, it seems like you don't know much about art itself. When you note that artists used to rely on patrons for money (for materials and living) you forget that patrons also told the artists what to create. This meant lots of Biblical scenes for the Church, plenty of portraits, sculpture, and landscape paintings for the Aristocracy, and not much else.
One of the most important cultural developments in the history of cultural developments has been the emergence of artists a autonomous creators. This is what elevated their roles from those of highly skilled craftsmen to leading intellectuals, pushing the boundaries of human perception. Culturally and creatively, we started to live in a totally different universe once the artistic class freed itself from the very narrow, conservative, and self-glorifying interests of the patron class.
I'm sorry, but the idea of "going back" seems like going back to government by heridetaty monarchy, alchemy, candle-lit everything, and anastesia-free dentistry. It's not what most people want.
Copyright leaves a lot to be desired, and it has plenty of room for improvement. Even so, it is vastly preferable to the alternative.
What I do know is that the material underpinnings of the creative forms which remain the most popular took generations—and sometimes centuries—to reach their current stages of development. Like old growth redwood groves, they can't be easily replaced if people decide that chopping them down was a mistake.
In other words, we're not talking about "creative destruction" here. Just destruction. Saying "prove the unprovable or die" is not an admirable way to care for something that vast numbers value highly and which lives by careful passage from generation to generation.
This is possibly true, but ignoring the fact that many artists still continue to release their work under copyright vs. some sort of free license without any compensation.
This legal innovation became the bedrock for the massively collaborative forms of media that went on to define the 20th century (newspapers, encyclopedias, literary anthologies, films, broadcasts, video games to name the biggest).
Also, the point of copyright is to resolve a very specific problem, which is reconciling the high capital costs of content creation with the low marginal cost of duplication. Of course, none of the people who casually and dismissively say "just figure out a different model" will be ever be clear about exactly what problem needs solving.
That's because acknowledging the mathematically inevitable failures awaiting any endevor with high R&D costs and low manufacturing and distribution costs make the logic of copyright clear. Either we create legal protections for the business or let it die. Given the extraordinary value offered by intangible goods, advanced economies have made the smart choice of creating legal protections in case where markets left to themselves would leave many of our best and brightest high and dry.
Also yes a large body of small time artists have to work other jobs to pay their rent, so many use copyright to try and secure income. I'm not sure how this is a bad thing. Just because you can easily subvert the system due to mp3's and fat bandwidth doesn't mean it should somehow now be legal, copyright is moot, and we tell every artist to "deal with it."
That's a ridiculous argument, which is clear if you apply it to other detrimental things like wars, murder, and disease.
Intelligent people also recognize that "detrimental" is a pretty broad category, and that you can't necessarily make an apples to apples comparison between two things simply because they're both detrimental.
Copyright is a legal and social institution. Wars, murder, and disease are not. Neither are earthquakes for that matter, or volcano eruptions. Detrimental as they may be, they're hardly things we can simply legislate out of existence (even I that's exactly what one of the Carolinas is trying to do in response to rising sea levels).
If you want to make a proper apple to apples comparison, pick something that is, at least, remotely analogous. Slavery, for instance, or the poll tax. Just make sure it's something people can actually legislate one way or the other, and not something that is obviously beyond the reach of the law.
I also like how you first imply that social institutions cannot be travesties, then you give an example of a social institution that is a travesty.
Which is not to say that copyright represent injustices similar to either of these institutions. But at least you'd be saying something only halfway stupid instead of something completely stupid.
Who has said that? I think there should be zero IP protection laws, but I believe that artists should expect to be paid for their work, and indeed would be paid for their work.