I do agree that artists are going to create no matter what. I do suspect we'd have less works if nobody could make a living doing it though. Especially things like film and animation which historically required crazy amounts of money up front. People were willing to fund those efforts because they could expect a likely return on their investment which without copyright protections wouldn't be possible.

We've gone way overboard, but I do think some level of protection for creators is for the best even now when it's easier and less expensive than ever to create.

> artists are going to create no matter what.

i don't agree. fine artists will, but the bulk of consumed art is commercial art, it's a job, and most people only work if they get money for it.

I like the soviet model of commissioning people to write e.g. math and science books: the author got a stipend like any office worker, and copyright belonged to the commissioner (the country).

> i don't agree. fine artists will, but the bulk of consumed art is commercial art

The bulk of art consumed is advertising. The bulk of art created however is not commercial art. It's people who paint, write music, write stories, etc. as a hobby. Even if it's just writing bad fan fic or shitty furry drawings people are constantly creating and publishing in their spare time. If all the commerial art went away, we'd seek out more of their stuff.

In the end there are very few artists who would never create anything again unless they were getting paid to do it. Money isn't really the reason artists create. They tend to feel a need to express themselves and have a love for the work they do. It's why artists are so easily exploited.

The works we prefer to consume tend to cost a lot more to produce and those are the things we'd risk losing if there copyright didn't exist at all. It'd be a sad state of affairs if all we had to read was fan fic. Even then though, a lot of people create impressive and popular works and release them for free.

As you point out, I'm not sure how you would do that study without having two otherwise identical countries that differ only by copywrite law.

Still, we can make some guesses what would happen without copyright.

eBook readers could offer all books for free to improve sales of their reader. Amazon already gives books that are in the public domain for free on Kindle. If Amazon doesn't expand this to all books, some competitor will. Project Gutenberg would also expand their collection to include all books.

Physical books wouldn't be free, but there would be no guarantee the author would get any money from them. There'd be zero incentive for printing houses to pay authors. They'd be allowed to sell the books without the author's permission and keep all the profits.

Authors' best option may be to ask for donations or start a Patreon. This works for some people, but in general, you make orders of magnitude less money off donations than actually selling something.

Would less money going to authors stop people from writing books? Probably somewhat. The most popular authors will still have ways to make money. And there'd still be people who write books for free, as a hobby. But it would reduce the number of professional authors.