Technology

When software and entertainment is created for people to use for free, that is a deliberate action from the creator. They can't do that every single time, but they can do it once in awhile if they please.

I am a professional artist and I sometimes draw things for free for other people because sometimes I decide it is worth it for me to do that. It is kinda like doing volunteer work. You don't get paid, but it gives you something back either socially or ideologically etc.

But I am pretty sure that the people who create free software and entertainment either aren't working full time in software or entertainment and get their money from an unrelated job or they decided to do one for the community inbetween orders. They would not do this all the time if they were financially dependent on their skills and products giving them food on the table. I don't think you would give your own services away for free all the time in the name of community spirit. But once in awhile, is fine. Then it is an agreement you made woth yourself, that you have given a work to the community for free and therefore you don't care about IP.

When it comes to games and copying, well, people have copied media for ages and no matter what you say, it does affect profitability. Musicians can't earn any money on their music. They earn money on merch and when they are on tour. Nobody buys their music anymore because they can just download it for free online. I can't speak for games as I'm not a gamer, but with movies I personally prefer to buy a physical copy of the film rather than downloading movies in poorer quality than what I would have been able to get on bluray. I don't know, but I can imagine people still buy games to get the best quality and maybe enough people want to financially support the developers to make sure that they can still produce good games than they want to make copies and share them. If games ended up being copied to the same extent thst music does, I think you would start to see an effect on the market because making games would no longer be financially possible. In fact, the gaming industry bubble did burst a few years ago and I know a lot of developers who can't find jobs. Similar in animation. And it is not like any of these creators lived good beforehand either. A profitable game, I doubt is profitable in the way you think it is. It is my personal experience from being both part of and a spectator in the industry that the success of any creation is largely smoke and mirrors. People are extremely poor and companies go bankrupt all the time, especially in recent years. Maybe part of it is because people decide to copy a game for free rather than buy it, maybe it is bigger than that, but people don't really value art nowadays because they don't see it as art, but as content that they can mindlessly consume and get easy access to. It should be easier than ever for artists to earn money with how much art people consume, but the opposite is true. If artists have their intellectual property taken from them as well in the landscape we already have, then that will be the death of the art career. We have so little already. If we can't even keep domain over our own creation, then what is the point?

I don't understand your argument about public domain books. Public domain refers to the material no longer having a living creator who can profit from their own work. People can sell public domain books but that money goes to the publisher who probably did a lovely new edition of an old book with pretty covers.

I don't know what you mean. The money from a sale of a public domain book won't financially support the author.

If we talk about a living author who owns their IP and their book is available in the library, then I still say the same thing I did before, that the library doesn't sell the books, nor do they take ownership of the IP. The book market also has other problems than public libraries. The problems they face is that no one reads anymore, but that is a different discussion.