Imagine the entire corpus of human creation, free to be remixed and extended. For now we hope they make a good sequel, someday...
Allowing creative output to be freely used, while forcing creators to subsist on the crumbs thrown back is a two-class system. It seems unfair to those doing the work in such a system.
Copyright is far from perfect (far far...) but it is still an improvement on patronage. At least a creator has control over the use of their work.
It's the only thing that makes sense in the 21st century. Copyright is unenforceable in the age of ubiquitous networked computers.
In order to enforce copyright, every computer will have to be locked down so that they only execute "compliant" software. Surely everyone browsing this site can appreciate the unfairness of that outcome. I for one do not want such a future under any circumstances. If the copyright business model is killed, so be it.
> At least a creator has control over the use of their work.
An illusion. They have no control. Their copyrights are infringed every single day. Most of the time people don't even realize they are infringing someone's copyright.
This is not true. While it is one possible approach to enforcing copyright, it is not the only possible approach. Network surveillance of distribution is another possibility that has been against p2p networks.
Copyright has never been completely enforcable. It has always been a partial solution aimed at preventing organized / profitable distribution, i.e. it is a legal fallback rather than a prevention. But a partially working solution is better than nothing.