[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

As for finding a way to encourage them to keep making things.......... no other way besides payment has been found yet

These sites prove people will write without being paid.

Obviously, money isn't the only reason people write. In fact, they do so in the face of threats of legal action and public denouncement as perverts.

I am confident that, with so many people wanting to write regardless of money, and with other people who want to read, and are willing to pay money or attention or offer other inducements, some method of encouragement will be established.

and I'm not talking about people writing for the joy of writing, of course people will still do that. I'm talking about getting your favourite author to write another book when he has bills to pay and food to put on the table and doesn't have time to write it because no one wants to pay for it unless he gives them something extra on top of writing it

Right now, he has to do "something extra" on top of writing: he has to deal with contracts, and publicity events, and document formatting, and possible scheduling updates, and rewrites to an editor's preferences. If he wants to self-publish, he has to research formats, sales websites, establish an online presence, and exercise some accounting skills.

The writers at those archives don't have to deal with any of that. They get to "just write." Changing the "extra stuff" will change which authors are financially successful; it won't change the amount of creative content available. Right now, there are authors languishing because they can't negotiate a contract, but could easily write a script to include a semi-customized note inside each emailed copy of a novella. ("This ebook was bought by [name] on [date]; thank you for your support!" With extra details yanked from a webform.)

I'm yet to be convinced that any "method of income that works without the support of copyright" will magically appear.

Magically? No. With great stress and much yelling and a number of talented authors' works getting lost to history. And other authors & artists, currently held back by copyright, free to flourish.

Suppose someone wants to release "the complete annotated Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone," with every paragraph marked with meanings, references, citations of fanfiction that refer to it, real-world incidents connected to it, and so on. Right now, nobody would attempt releasing such a book--the lawsuit would bankrupt anyone, even if the ruling went in their favor. Reproducing an entire Harry Potter book, even for research purposes, would be a hard argument for fair use.

And fanfic would be legal to sell. I grant that the vast majority of the over 500,000 Harry Potter stories at Fanfiction.net are not worth publishing beyond a devoted fanbase, but some would stand alone as excellent novels, and being able to sell them, even if only with the added value of personal notes or chatroom discussions, would encourage those authors to write more.

I'd love to see a well-written rewrite of the Harry Potter books from Ron Weasley's point of view. It may already be written. It'll be available for sale in no more than another hundred and fifty years, barring strange medical advances.

Insisting that copyright protects authors and artists ignores the ones being suppressed by it--the ones who could be wealthy if they loved Dickens instead of Rand, the ones who want to make movies of Batman instead of Robin Hood, the ones who want to write about the characters they grew up with, not the ones their grandparents grew up with, the ones who want to perform and re-interpret the music that shaped their youth.

Focusing on "what would we lose if copyright vanished" misses the explosion of artistic works that would suddenly be available to share, and sell in any way the creators could come up with.