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Some people simply must write, be it good or bad, commercial or not, just as some must make music or paint or sculpt or participate in any number of other arts or hobbies. The comparison to sport, where many participate but few professionally is not an entirely irrelevant one. There will still be books written if there is neither copyright nor monetary reward of any type. The Roman Empire had no intellectual property laws, yet still managed to produce works still admired today. Most authors in modern times are never able to make a living from their work, though many are motivated by the prospect that they might. Without some reasonable incentive for authors there will still be stories told. There will still be books, or at least ebooks, and they will be very widely available at little or no cost. But the unfortunate fact is that the standard generally will almost certainly fall, and there will be huge numbers of books which will simply not be written. Including many great books.
Our current intellectual property laws including copyright are badly broken. At worst they do positive harm. At best the bulk of the rewards that they provide accrue not to the actual authors or creators but to that group referred to as "rights-holders", who hold those rights for obscene and unjustified amounts of time. Certainly a fundamental review is long overdue, but will not happen because of the power of lobbyists and vested interests. Such a review should also consider whether a statutory monopoly is the best way to provide the desired incentive. Personally I suspect it may be though in a much shorter and restricted form. But other alternatives should also be considered.
I am not publicly condoning piracy nor suggesting that people break the existing laws, even though I consider them to be very bad laws in many respects. I hate to see authors not getting paid but must admit to not shedding any tears for some rights-holders in that position.
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