There’s a reason libraries will buy multiple copies of popular books.
That depends. Most of the time the store has the option of tearing off the cover and reporting it to the publisher as "destroyed unsold" for a refund. That applies no matter how many people may have read it while it was sitting on the shelf.
And why must the entire book be treated as a unit? I see no legal reason why a library could not cut off the binding and lend out chapters or individual pages from the book to patrons on demand, which would allow multiple patrons to read (different parts of) the same book simultaneously. You could easily have 20 or more people reading the same book without major conflicts if you can pass the pages around quickly enough.
It doesn't necessarily want to be written, though. That's the part people who make this argument always seem to forget.
Whether it's through our existing copyright-supported frameworks or some other mechanism, there needs to be enough in it for authors (and editors and cover illustrators and printers and online distribution services and...) to be worth producing the work in the first place.
I disagree about the "less books, more quality" argument. Today, we have more books, more quality. Sure, there are lots of bad books today, but the volume of high-quality works today so far exceeds the volume of any books (good or bad) produced during the patronage era that it's like comparing a nuclear bomb to a match.
None of whom got their money from exorting readers of their books.
What you have there is a argument for basic income, not a argument for copyright.
History is filled with many authors who died young and penniless because they could not survive on their writing during their lifetimes. And that's exactly the system you're arguing for.
> And [authors dying young and penniless]'s exactly the system you're arguing for.
Bullshit. Your system is the one that produces that (see also fanfiction authors, who I'm sure aren't true Scotsmen to you). As I said:
> > What you have there is a argument for basic income, not a argument for copyright.
My system is the system that has enabled hundreds of thousands of artists and other creators to survive on their own without needing publishers or other entities to sell their work for them and pay them a pittance.
Basic income is a separate discussion. It would mean that artists wouldn't die, but it would also mean that corporations would get to exploit artists worse than they ever have before.
You really need to think of the consequences of your suggestions before you suggest altering other people's livelihoods for your own momentary convenience.
Sure. But it was a long period of time, and the number of pretty nice books produced during that time was relatively low, and the number of people they reached was also relatively low.
I'm no fan of content farms and their clickbait ad-spam, but there is still plenty of content written for love around if you step away from sources like Facebook and Google. However, much of it isn't edited or illustrated to professional standards, or covering subjects comprehensively, or accompanied by exercises, or based on years of demanding research and fieldwork. Commercial support can provide these benefits in a way that most people writing purely for fun as a hobby can't or won't.
And that is because lack of copyright?
People still write at a loss in many cases
Copyright isn't a wall around information. Copyright doesn't prohibit anyone from taking the information in a book and presenting it in their own way. For example, you or anyone else can take a copyrighted book, extract the valuable information like mathematical equations and methods and data, write your own explanations of the information, make your own diagrams, write your own exercises for readers, and then publish it and sell it. Copyright won't stop you or anyone else from doing that, because copyright only protects expressions of ideas, not the ideas themselves.
Copyright absolutely does place a wall around certain kinds of information. The fact that a certain book consists of a particular arrangement of words is just as much information as the meaning behind the words.
Pirate Bay is exactly like a local libruary which is like a book store. The only difference is physical books vs digital, if you have to give it back and when and the cost.
Book stores will let you violate the publishers copyright as long as you don't leave the store. Want to read that entire book, sit on a chair and read.
A libruary will let you read at the place or at home but you have to bring it back in a week.
Piratebay lets you read it forever but it's a digital copy.
All scenerios you can read without paying.