Nothing wrong with wanting to get paid. They're monopolists because their means to that end is a literal monopoly. Created something? Government gives you an essentially eternal monopoly on it. In other words: if you're a copyright holder, you're a monopolist. It really is that simple. I suppose I'm also a monopolist.

That’s not true. You can just read something else.

I didn't say copyright holders had a monopoly on reading though. I said they had monopolies on "their" works.

Then the concept is meaningless. If we go with your definition, Toyota now has a "monopoly" on Toyota Camrys, even though there are quite a few comparable cars for sale from other manufacturers.

How much of the common culture is free from copyright and how much belongs to megacorps? It's really a monopoly

Quite a lot of books or characters I’d expect most people to recognize are in the public domain, to be honest.

Do you not have a monopoly on your work?

Because ideas are not property.

Are mathematical theorems property? No, because someone who proved the theorem "owns" it just as much as someone who has studied the proof and learned it by heart. And what about independently discovered theorems? Who owns the idea in that case?

The moment "your" idea travels from your brain to my brain it becomes "my" idea too. Just like a digital file that gets copied from one computer to another is the exact same file, bit for bit. It's senseless to talk about "original" in that case.

Consider that copyright protects a presentation of a recipe but not the recipe itself and you will realize that “ideas” are not copyright protects.

Intellectual property and copyright are not the same thing. Also the presentation of something is an idea just like the something itself, so copyright is also a scam.

They are literally the same thing. "Intellectual property" comprises copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secrets.

>Also the presentation of something is an idea just like the something itself, so

This is exactly what copyright is. Copyright is based on the argument that the presentation of an idea is a unique correspondence to the idea, and constitutes a tangible item to which property value is attached. It's not intangible and ephemeral (an idea) or concrete and unremarkable (a piece of paper that the idea will be written on).

Sophistry. Intellectual work is indeed Work, and people who engage in it expect money for their service, otherwise, they're happier to not do it at all.

Nothing I said implies intellectual work should be free, unless you have a skewed idea of what selling your services or a product means

Legally, the expression of an idea is a form of property in the United States and most other nations (looking at you, Vatican City). Conceptually, the two questions ("ideas are/are not property") have been debated in the West for centuries. "We stand on the shoulders of giants" lost, and Fichte/Talfourd won. For better and worse, ideas are property.

>Curiously when we talk about science where there is no money, the knowledge is ownerless

USDA grant disbursements for ag science alone would make your eyes bleed.

Can you really not imagine any kind of system where everyone can pay their bills and knowledge isn't guarded behind a paywall?

I can imagine various options but none of them would change the point I'm making.