The idea of reproduction of artistic works from all over the world and from any time in the past? It makes everything too complicated to analyze in terms of what's fair!
You mean like paying a monthly subscription fee to access content on demand? That's still patronage.
If I create a piece of art that many people can enjoy, why shouldn't I get compensated for adding that value to their lives?
Same is true for software.
We have this in the 21st century, it's called paying for content. If you pay Netflix, you're their patron.
It’s fair you get paid an amount commensurate with the quality of the work you produced. The quality is determined by the number of people who view it, so while in effect it’s payment per view, it’s not practically different than having an oracle who can perfectly assess quality of work pay the artist once up front.
If those are the conditions for which the work was created, then they absolutely do. Regardless, downloading a work and distributing it, that’s theft. If the creator/financer made it available, then that’s their prerogative. At some point in the chain, that content left someone’s server under a license agreement that then was broken when the downloader shared it.
The breaking of the license agreement is the issue here. People don’t have a right to break a valid contract unless a court says they do. Regardless if your feelings, it’s still theft.
And yes, we do benefit from copyright. It protects your work from thieves who played no part in the financing or creation of the work.
The proper economic arrangement for those who wish to make a living with creative works is patronage. Someone asks you to make something, you make it for them, then you get paid. You then don't get paid until you make another work.
Thus content creators shouldn't have an automatic entitlement to get paid each time someone reads/listens to/watches a work.
If you work once, it's only fair for you to get paid once. The idea of royalties that pay beyond the initial act of creation is unfair because you should not get paid to do nothing.
Copyright is meant to be temporary scheme to encourage creative works. It is not meant to establish ownership over non-physical goods like music, art, etc. though it is definitely currently abused to be that way.
I guess at some point in history we needed copyright to encourage more creativity, but honestly look around you - we are saturated with so much intellectual property. So many movies, software UIs, rehashes of rehashes. Does society really need/benefit from the incentive of copyright/royalty any longer? It seems only entrenched legacies are significantly benefiting currently.