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.
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.
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.
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.
(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.)
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.