[Lerc]

How many times were hugely popular books rejected before a publisher decided they were worthy?

Copyright far more protects the wealthy than the good. They don't need to sell your book, they just need to own the book that people are buying right now. Giving your book a chance to sell would dectract from those sales.

If there were no copyright anyone trying to sell the book $1 cheaper would be undercut by someone selling $1 cheaper them them, and so on. The financial incentive to do that goes away. People then choose to distribute based on different incentives, like the fact that they have seen something worthy that others should see. We have almost completely lost that today because the financial incentive doesn't care what it is as long as you buy it. That might lead to a world dominated by an optimisation for whatever it takes to get you engaged, or worse, addicted. That world might really suck.

There needs to be a way to support the creation of art. Copyright lets a few corporations decide the subset of available art is seen enough and available to pay for (in the hope that maybe some of the patment gets to the creator). It is not a system that works in the modern world.

[freejazz]

Well, there is nothing to distribute if the author is not incentivized to write... which you seemed to skip past.

[joquarky]

If money is the only incentive, then it's not a product of artistic work.

Also current copyright laws only exists to fulfill the constitutional mandate to promote the progress of science and useful arts. There are a lot of alternative ways to fulfill that mandate that don't include a lot of the baggage we have presently in copyright law which is now slowing down progress.

[freejazz]

>If money is the only incentive, then it's not a product of artistic work.

This is just bullshit and no one said it's the only incentive.

> There are a lot of alternative ways to fulfill that mandate that don't include a lot of the baggage we have presently in copyright law which is now slowing down progress.

such as??

[account42]

I hope you're not implying that post-hoc commercial exploitation via copyright is the only incentive for authors to write. Because we have a whole history worth of evidence to the contrary.

[freejazz]

I guess you'd prefer to enjoy significantly fewer works mainly consisting of stories told through oral tradition. Some of us like movies!

[Lerc]

Indeed, perhaps I should have said

There needs to be a way to support the creation of art.

[deaton]

Great, that way is called copyright. The author has the right to control who has the rights to distribute their work, and can require compensation in exchange for that right; what economists refer to as "selling".

[Lerc]

The entire thesis of my commrnt is copyright is not that.

It awards a few creators outsize rewards, but suppress creation of many more.

It does not petform the job that it is supposed to do.

[freejazz]

>The entire thesis of my commrnt is copyright is not that.

Your entire thesis is false on its face. One does not need a big publisher to get published or make there work available. You've also offered no other alternative wherein the other works not sought by large publishers will somehow be afforded equivalent treatment so your proposition is just ridiculous if not outright ignorant.

[satvikpendem]

People have been paid artists before copyright even existed, what some might call patronage.

[freejazz]

And?

[satvikpendem]

Therefore copyright is not necessary.

[freejazz]

>There needs to be a way to support the creation of art.

Yeah, it's called "copyright."