Maybe the strategy is to try to build up some steam behind the abolish copyright movement to move the Overton window a bit.

If IP owners see actual support behind abolishing copyright, maybe rolling back to min(30, life of author) years of protection would seem like a more reasonable compromise.

min(30, life of author) kinda makes a perverse incentive to kill the author, no?

I have term life insurance that provides the same incentive and I'm not particularly worried.

I thought that was always the point. A world without any copyright at all obviously doesn't function.

As opposed to today, where big companies never steal from writers, and it’s not very hard for them to make a living?

(Not books, but Amazon has ripped off indie products before: https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/amazon-copied-produ..., and books are being ripped off by other companies’ LLMs.)

If it were to happen I don't think Amazon would sell any books to begin with. And even under the current system, I only buy books to pay writers, and even then they only get very little of the amount I pay. I'd much rather pay them directly through whatever system evolves through the hypothetical change.

They're not paid because access to books is limited by copyright, but because whatever eyeballs they manage to reach are willing to buy their books. I may not be a representative sample, but I think that part wouldn't change much, and discoverability would still be the deciding factor.

I hate the attention economy as much as the next person, but I don't think there's any putting that back in the bottle, the amount of media won't shrink.

> if copyrigth is abolished. amazon would publish every single boon without giving a cent to writers. it would be reqlly hard for writers to make a living.

How about a unified social platform that allows people to donate to the authors/artists/creators/projects of their choosing? It could allow feedback similar to goodreads, and also be more longterm focused than the traditional kickstarter, etc. The social aspect would give people a pat on the back for sending money somewhere.

We could do that with all kinds of IP! Use a feature in software or in a Meta app, just donate to the minimum amount wage (for legal reasons) workers who developed it. And Meta and Google themselves could be forbidden to show ads, just rely on donations as well.

I sense sarcasm, but anybody serious about fixing corporate social media should read this:

https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-days-of-social-media/

I guess my idea would easily fit into what that article proposes for a solution.

Is it not hard for writers to make a living? If so maybe I should do that.

Some professions should be hard to make a living in. Copyright is objectively immoral, you don’t need to go political to realise that.

> amazon would publish every single boon without giving a cent to writers. it would be reqlly hard for writers to make a living.

Not quite, Amazon would just become the publisher that buys new books/articles/whatever directly from the writers, one upfront fee. Not saying it's a sustainable living for writers, just saying that's probably what would happen.