[WalterBright]

The prospects for making money selling as an artist (author, painter, athlete, musician, actor) are so poor why do they care so much about copyright law?

The route to riches for, say, a musician is to become famous and charge for the coliseum seats to hear him play. To become famous doesn't it make more sense to give the music away? Being famous means you get high consulting rates, get paid for personal appearances, get paid for putting your name on sneakers, etc. A famous author could get paid for writing movie scripts or snagging a professorship or teaching seminars.

If copyright law disappeared tomorrow, would the artists really be worse off?

[onlytime]

I am anti-copyright, but I think you're considering this through the lens of a computer scientist/rocket engineer instead of someone who's had to work a worthless desk job or wait tables or paint houses.

As someone who recently (and probably unsustainably) got out of the cycle of worthless jobs and knows a handful of musicians, here's my perspective:

Indie (and indie label) musicians can actually do fairly well with recorded music. No, they won't be rich. Middle class is at most the target, usually under. Live in a third-tier city and have few expenses. You don't need to sell very much for a baseline livable state.

$10000 a month isn't an achievable target for most working artists. $800, on the other hand, is, even without touring. Sell a handful of Bandcamp copies, sell a few physical copies (cassettes are best for this in the current moment, being cheap to produce and having a fairly loyal audience), have your back catalog do well enough on streaming.

$800 is enough to live on, if you're living with roommates. In many ways, living with $800/month and no unfulfilling 40hr job is much better than living with $1800 and an unfulfilling 40hr job. Even if you don't want to live with roommates, it cuts the amount of work for an employer you have to do by a great deal. Working low-skill work is soul-crushing.

For authors, from what I understand, this baseline is even more achievable. If you have no hopes of getting rich, the current copyright system is fine.

[WalterBright]

I'm surprised they can even reach $800/mo.

But there are multiple other avenues for revenue. One can sell merchandise, such as the ever-popular band t-shirt. And there are still many who will want to buy an official cassette rather than just download a song. There are also paid gigs - a live performance is not replaceable with a download. One can livestream a performance, and get paid for the ad placements.

[onlytime]

All of these are uniquely worse than the current system for the artists, though. Again, I agree that copyright should be abolished (or that copyleft should be enshrined in law), entirely, for all forms of media (including software). I just think it's important to realize that there are classes of people for whom the existing circumstances are better for. Acknowledging that a change will disadvantage or make circumstances materially worse for people is important.

Livestreaming and live performances and merch creation are all vastly different skillsets than making music in your bedroom, and some musicians are only really good at that part.