[everforward]

That race to the bottom is a feature, not a bug. It allows poor people to engage with culture. That's the tradeoff here. At some point copyright is protecting a tiny amount of profits for the author in exchange for locking people out of access.

Copyright is supposed to be a societal benefit, or there's little reason for society to spend money on enforcing it. That's where we currently are, and I think why there's such a strong reaction to copyright currently. We pay to protect the works and then we pay again to buy them. They become free when they're so culturally irrelevant that nobody wants them even for free. The costs of enforcement are socialized and the benefits are privatized.

At some point, copyright is going to have to provide more back to society or society will get tired of paying to enforce it.