The question isn’t whether they’d work for free, it’s whether they’d work if it was impossible to generate revenue through enforceable copyrights. We know that even under these conditions, some authors would work for free, others would be paid by companies that benefit from their work other than through the sale of licensed copies, and still others would be paid by patrons and governments. It’s impossible to say whether the loss of all new works that don’t fall into these categories would outweigh the gain of all existing creative works becoming available for unlimited free use, but we can be pretty confident that there would still be more new creative works (perhaps of lower average quality) than any person could consume in a lifetime.

If you asked most software engineers if they'd code if it were unpaid, you'd also get mostly "no"s. And yet FOSS carries on. There are some people who simply need to create.

And yes, some FOSS is subsidized by companies who pay their engineers to contribute, but there are also people who contribute on their own time.

The amount of FOSS in the world that exists from people who contribute on their own time is a small fraction of the amount of software (total) in the world. Yes, software won't die out, but if somehow people couldn't get paid to be software engineers any more, there would be a lot less software engineering happening.

It's certainly possible to argue that copyright is so bad that we should have way fewer authors and musicians in this world, such that only those who are truly passionate about writing and making music (and/or independently wealthy) will do it, but it doesn't seem to me that that's what people are arguing.

> "And yet FOSS carries on."

Isn't it already very well established that FOSS is currently largely being built by people employed by corporations? They are most definitely not unpaid.

I agree that writing wouldn't go to zero. But I do think we'd get a lot less of it!

(And the same if FOSS were entirely unpaid)