> writing books is your only means of putting food on the table

That's a strange assumption. Many authors fail, or only produce works in their spare time and work other jobs. I mean there's no fundamental right to be a successful author who can live off selling books.

Of course as a society we find it desirable to create an environment where artists can make a living from their works and create more art. That's why copyright exists. It's a tradeoff, all citizens are required to respect the creations of others in exchange for the opportunity for everyone to dedicate their lives to it and make an income with it. (Note: It's just an opportunity to make profit, not a right to profit)

But that societal contract gets perverted by commercial interests to the point where people stop seeing copyright as something positive and instead will refuse to adhere to it.

The internet making copying so much easier than ever before also skews that tradeoff by making it much more difficult for everyone to respect copyright. Breaking copyright is even easier than jaywalking and I don't think private citizens will stop anytime soon.

So ultimately that scheme to incentivize people to be creative used to be "fair", but now that view has somewhat shifted. And the system needs an overhaul.

I'd very much expect most authors that focus on literature rather than short-form paid-by-the-word non-fiction-work to fail or only receive a minority of their income from writing.

Becoming a writer to make money off literature is pretty much like playing the lottery - the odds are badly stacked against you; if you have "success" most of the time you'll make a pittance, and only a tiny proportion of the people who are successful make it big.

If anything, current incentive structures created by current copyright are bad for most people in the creative fields, as the "hit culture" means they're heavily geared towards disproportionally rewarding a very small subset of people. While the hope of striking it big may lure some people to create, I'm more concerned that the bad odds of being able to make ends meet puts a lot of very creative people off those career choices.

I think very few people feel that depriving some person of the fruits of his or her labor in the way that you describe is a moral or ethical thing to do. But, it is by definition not theft. Perhaps some new law, or some changes to law are needed to fairly deal with the problem. Treating it as theft is an abuse of the law.

I think it is interesting that you use a hypothetical author as an example since even before technology showed up and wrecked the party, copyright law arguably failed (or at least was never very good) at its supposed purpose.

> would you personally not feel like someone "stole" at least some of your work from you?

Absolutely not. If anything, I would be flattered to meet somebody actually reading my book, and I'd probably be eager to have a chat with him, maybe ask for opinions and perhaps tell him about other books I'm working on, if it looks like he could be interested. That'd be an event that could make me very happy.

The reality is that nobody seems to be interested in what I do. Should I feel I'm being treated unfair by all the people in the train who never bought and never used my stuff? Never even heard of me?

Meanwhile, your family could be starving because you could sell exactly zero copies...

I can't blame people for not wanting to buy my stuff. I'm not entitled to any sales. They don't have to.

So if I'm starving, it's not the fault of the people who aren't interested in buying my stuff. Calling them thieves solves nothing.

They don't have to buy it, but it doesn't change the fact that they are using your work without paying you. It's the same as if you were a street painter selling your work, and someone comes around and takes a picture of what you painted and says "naaah, I'll just print it at home, rather than giving you $50 for it". You are not entitled to any sales. But that person took your work without paying. You have no right to demand that he pays for it, but he had no right to take it without paying.