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Similarly, the proper economic arrangement for those who wish to consume art is patronage. If you want to view someone's creative work, you must hire them, come to an agreement about the subject to be depicted and materials to be used, and commit to paying the full amount upon delivery.

The idea of reproduction of artistic works from all over the world and from any time in the past? It makes everything too complicated to analyze in terms of what's fair!

> who wish to consume art is patronage

You mean like paying a monthly subscription fee to access content on demand? That's still patronage.

This doesn't make economic sense.

If I create a piece of art that many people can enjoy, why shouldn't I get compensated for adding that value to their lives?

Same is true for software.

Expecting endless (or effectively endless) compensation, or any compensation you demand unilaterally, for adding value once, seems abusive.

The correct solution is to fix copyright terms to 10 or 20 years, and the problems fix themselves.

> The proper economic arrangement for those who wish to make a living with creative works is patronage

We have this in the 21st century, it's called paying for content. If you pay Netflix, you're their patron.

> it’s only fair you get paid once

It’s fair you get paid an amount commensurate with the quality of the work you produced. The quality is determined by the number of people who view it, so while in effect it’s payment per view, it’s not practically different than having an oracle who can perfectly assess quality of work pay the artist once up front.

> Thus content creators shouldn't have an automatic entitlement to get paid each time someone reads/listens to/watches a work.

If those are the conditions for which the work was created, then they absolutely do. Regardless, downloading a work and distributing it, that’s theft. If the creator/financer made it available, then that’s their prerogative. At some point in the chain, that content left someone’s server under a license agreement that then was broken when the downloader shared it.

The breaking of the license agreement is the issue here. People don’t have a right to break a valid contract unless a court says they do. Regardless if your feelings, it’s still theft.

And yes, we do benefit from copyright. It protects your work from thieves who played no part in the financing or creation of the work.

If a work is truly useful, it's better for more members of a society to have it at a low cost. The other way around benefits one person at the expense of society.

Not true if the cost is too low to justify creators continuing to invest in such works.

Creators should get or have additional sources of funding that don't depend on restricting access.