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I wonder how many would be written if copyright was only 20 years instead of more than a century? To the point that most people will never be legally allowed to directly build off of the culture they grew up in.

Lord of the rings will be under copyright til roughly 2050. I think Tolkien's estate has gotten more than enough money from that book and it's time to let other use the word hobbit without the threat of a lawsuit.

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> I wonder how many would be written if copyright was only 20 years instead of more than a century?

I expect it would not move the needle much. I support reduced copyright periods, though not in the specific way you do. But that's not what we're talking about here, is it? The comment I replied to seemed to be advocating for total abolition of copyright law, and my comment is written to be interpreted in that context.

> To the point that most people will never be legally allowed to directly build off of the culture they grew up in.

What specifically are you talking about? Every author borrows from what came before. Copyright law doesn't even enter the picture in the vast majority of cases, because you generally don't have to copy to "build off of the culture [you] grew up in".

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For what it’s worth I think abolishing copyright wouldn’t have as big of an impact on art production as you do. Most artists (e.g. musicians or authors) aren’t struggling because their art is popular but copied by others (or lack of copyright). But because nobody listens to or reads their work.

Even before AI more people tried to be an author/musician than could ever hope to gain even financial success. I don’t think less copyright will dissuade them.

> every author borrows

Borrows yes. But that has changed drastically in the last 100 years because of what has become the copyright system.

I’ll be long dead and gone before people can make and publish their own LOTR, or Star Wars, or whatever franchise they grew up with. Disney would be impossible to start given the current regulations, all those tales would be locked up, and we would all be worse for it.

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Simple piraciy is not even the worst possible outcome.

Without copyright, nothing stops one from simply selling a book under their own name.

Big publishers could just reprint anything and get it into brick & mortar stores. No money for authors.

Advocating for absolutely no copyright is wild.

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The worthwhile ones would still be written. Even if they are not enjoyable. The dissemination of ideas from an activist perspective is uninhibitable
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> The worthwhile ones would still be written.

Citation needed, as well as your precise definition of "worthwhile".

> Even if they are not enjoyable.

Huh?

> The dissemination of ideas from an activist perspective is uninhabitable

Yes, I understand that anti-copyright activists want to abolish copyright.

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Farenheit 451 is a book with the same theme.
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You are arguing in theoreticals, so you should not be surprised if your answers are hypotheticals.

In reality most art is done because the artist has something to say, and the money they get from it is only motivating in as much as it enables the artist to do more art. So I would guess in a world without copyright protection we would just find other ways to pay artists and a very similar amount of art would be produced.

You can see an example of this e.g. in Iceland where the market is way to small for art aimed at the domestic market to make enough money solely by selling it (possible with music; rare with books; not possible with movies). Instead the state has an extensive “artist salary“ program, which pays artist regardless of how well the art they produce sells. Unsurprisingly Iceland produces a lot of art and has many working artists.

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People have been pirating books online for 20 years and in that time the number of books published per year has increased 15-fold. A number of my favorites have been released in that time.
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