> There are thriving communities of people who do all those things without trust funds, and never getting paid for it either.

I know this isn’t the intent, but any time this point is made I always hear it as deeply entitled. “The slaves love what they do!”

I have a generally visceral reaction to anything that argues against paying workers for their work, or that argues that we can remove systems whereby workers are paid and magic will happen. Even if the systems we have are very flawed, replacing them with nothing isn’t an improvement.

I used to believe all that 90s cyber anarchist stuff. Then I watched the trajectory of the music industry. Now when I hear the old slogan “information wants to be free” I translate that mentally as “I want other peoples’ labor to be free to me.”

There is no longer a music industry. There is no longer a journalism industry. Pretty soon there will no longer be a book industry. We’ve decided we don’t want to pay for those kinds of things, so I guess we won’t have them.

… or more likely they will all be ad supported or funded to push some billionaire or government’s agenda. We know what that hellscape looks like.

> There is no longer a music industry.

And yet there's plenty of people making so much great music that you could never listen to it all if you wanted to. That's an industry in all but name.

> I have a generally visceral reaction to anything that argues against paying workers for their work

I do as well. I wonder to what degree though the publishers are still representing the interests of their authors when they go after archive.org. It would be interesting to ask some authors what their feelings are regarding publishers going after book lending, libraries, etc.

> There is no longer a music industry. There is no longer a journalism industry. Pretty soon there will no longer be a book industry. We’ve decided we don’t want to pay for those kinds of things, so I guess we won’t have them

Although, let us not forget that the context here is lending, its legitimacy and its impact to industries.

Libraries - including bibliothecae, hemerothecae, discothecae, mediathecae - predate those industrial crisis: people could consult books, periodicals, records and media freely, and yet the industry was running - people bought anyway.

The crisis in the music industry, in the journalism industry and in the publishing industry (etc.) are more probably related to situational factors, involving quality, competition, habit shift, infrastructure.

By saying "replacing [the system of paying the workers] with nothing", you're arguing against a position which is held by no one.

You cannot in any shape or form argue that artists on Etsy are not getting paid.

The crux is in paying for free duplication. If you stop paying for that, you're not removing all sources of revenue. Commission is older than copyright, just look at the Sistine Chapel. For other forms of expression, other things exist, like concerts for music. The system of paying the workers will remain, even if some parts of it get torn down.

"There is no longer a music industry" despite that the system for collecting money for duplicated music is the dominating way to listen to music (you can't listen to a spotify track without money changing hands). Clearly, you recognize that this system is not working.

Good for them, but you will notice all the greatest art in the world was created by people who got paid for their work.

Ah, the sweet money Homer got for Odyssey.

As far as I know, we dont even know if Homer was a single individual. But if you have better information about Homer which is relevant for the discussion at hand, I would love to know more.