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Originally Posted by Giggleton
For most of human history texts were freely shared...
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No, they weren't. For most of human history, texts were locked away, few people had access to them. They were about as freely distributed as is the gold in Fort Knox. Then the printing press came along in 1440. The first copyright law was in 1710. So in the age when it was possible for people to distribute texts, we had 270 years without copyright, and 302 years with copyright.
The reason we have so many texts is that because of copyright, authors have an incentive to create. Without it, the only people writing would be those who wanted to give their work for free, basically hobbyists with other incomes.
If you want free books, you alredy have access to more books than you could ever read in a lifetime; books that have had their copyrights expire and books where the author chose not to charge for them.
I'm a supporter of the public domain, I wouldn't have extended copyright to the current terms, and oppose further expansion. But to eliminate copyright is to kill the golden goose.
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If you read a life altering text, do you not want to share that text with as many people as possible so that they might have the same experience as you? And do you not think that any block to this kind of sharing is severely detrimental to the advancement of our species culture...
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This life-altering text can't be shared with anyone if it is never written. If it is given away for free, it is probably never going to be written in the first place. I support copyright for a limited period because it both provides the incentive for authors to create works and ensures that they will enter the public domain at some point. Both eternal copyright and no copyright strangle culture.