Okay. So using the J.K. Rowling example: provide a plausible way that she could make money off of her writing, and particularly her first risky book, in the absence of copyright.
There are a number of cases where creators of popular works have been granted substantial sums to create subsequent works through crowdsourcing.
Edit for examples.
Cyan, creator of Myst and Riven, had two very successful Kickstarter to fund new works. First, they raised $1,321,306 to make Obduction, then $1,433,161 for Firmament.
Elite: Dangerous raised £1,578,316 for a modern remake.
Cyan had already made Myst and Riven. This is close to the opposite of what I was asking for.
So once again: you seriously think that J.K. Rowling, a completely unknown author with a manuscript repeatedly rejected by publishing houses, is going to be able to raise sufficient funding on Kickstarter for her first work?
And how much did those titles actually cost to make? I seriously doubt either game shipped without at least 4x the kickstarter funds.
They were only able to make up the rest because they knew copyright meant they'd get paid more when they shipped via sales where as without copyright it would just be copied.
Here's an article on Elite:Dangerous saying the actual budget was 8m
I'm not sure what your point is. I thought the point that was trying to be made is that Kickstarter is a way to fund gamedev. But AFAIK there isn't a single example of the funds from Kickstarter being sufficient funding for a single game ever, AAA or indie.
(unless the game was being made for free as a hobby and the kickstarted was just for fun and not actually funding).
Crowdsourcing still relies on copyright usually, and does in the cases you mention. It's simply preording a game or a book. Without copyright there would be no need to preorder the game or book, you could simply wait until it is out and make a free copy of it.
Both Obduction and Firmament are for sale. They aren't free games.
There are plenty of freely-available works that are crowdfunded though. It's true however that the costs of making a game like Obduction and Firmament dwarf even those crowdfunding revenues. The same applies to high-budget feature films. A 100% crowdfunding approach strongly selects for lower production costs, which also means improved efficiency and a larger variety of works overall.
> Her first book was also written without her receiving any money to do so.
But she owned the copyright to it, and could trade that copyright for a contract on the book. That is, she had a viable monetization mechanism if her work was good.
So once again: absent this, provide a plausible way Rowling could have made money on her first book.
Rowling is quite an outlier - 1% of 1% of 1%. While a fascinating example, it seems unoptimal to center copyright protection laws around her experience.
Not if your goal is to help the greatest number of authors, but it might be if your goal is to help the greatest number of readers. Since a single book can be enjoyed by many, it's arguably better to have a single book that is very liked than one thousand books that nobody really likes to read.
I write and give away free software. People have paid to come to my workshops. They've paid me to write more.
It's sort of like why would anyone pay to attend MIT, when you can watch videos of the lectures for free on youtube? Oddly enough, MIT is doing better than ever.
MIT has an IP-equivalent in the form of the exclusive right to tell people you graduated there. Plus a regular property right in who frequents the campus, and it's known that much of the value comes from the network one forms there.
The Andy Weir example. "The Martian" was originally a blog series, and actually his 3rd book.
He created an ebook version of The Martian, freely downloadable at the time. People did give him donations though. He only added it to Kindle for $0.99, because Amazon wouldn't let him distribute it for free. It look off from there.
When people would rather give the author $0.99 to make it easy to access on Kindle, than download it for free, and it becomes a bestseller, then that is a plausible way for an author to make money.