Yes, the people who actually did the work.
I put in a day's work, I get a day's pay. I don't get paid again for the same work later.
From my point of view, copyright is
unnatural. The natural state of an idea or a creative work is that anyone should be able to build upon it. If I use a sample from a song someone wrote in a song I write, that does not diminish the original. Both can co-exist without any problem.
This is unlike physical property. Let's take a bike, for example. In most cases, only one person can ride a bike at a time. If I'm riding a bike, my friend can't ride the same bike at the same time. They either need to get their own bike, or they can borrow mine in which case I can't ride it while they have it. The bike is a scarce resource. It makes sense to have ownership of the bike, because that means the owner gets to decide who uses it at any one time.
But an idea or a piece of art is fundamentally
not. If I listen to a song, nothing prevents a friend I'm having over from listening to the same song. We can both listen to the song at the same time, and you could even say that the shared experience adds to the benefit of the song. Maybe we'll even sing along, adding our own interpretations to the song, or dance, or whatever. Either way, that song is an unlimited resource. It can be shared infinitely. It may be tied to a physical artifact like a record in which case that particular artifact is a limited resource, but the song itself can be copied and listened to into infinity.
Copyright imposes an artificial scarcity on creative works. It's like if we had a machine that could produce unlimited amounts of food at zero cost, and someone wanted to ban it because it would screw over the farmers.
But since we currently don't have infinite zero-cost food, artists need to get paid to eat, and until we can get to the stage of fully automated luxury space communism copyright seems to be the least bad solution. But it should be limited to not do more damage to the common cultural cache than necessary.
As I’ve repeatedly pointed out, copyright prevents/limits copying something too closely, but not actual creativity. Let’s be honest here: what is more creative, copying someone’s work exactly and making a few changes to tell a story or doing an identifiable homage that tells the same tale?
Both can be creative. But one lowers the bar to letting your own creativity flow, because it lets you build upon things that already exist and focus on the things that you yourself add to the mix. If I can publish adventures for the Forgotten Realms without Wizards' permission, I can focus on making a kick-ass adventure instead of having to build the whole setting where the adventure takes place.
Start by creating a good social safety net and a decent healthcare system.
Most of the ways in which copyrighted material generates income are directly related to the copyright itself. The big bucks for musicians come from songwriting royalties, concerts and merchandise, nor record sales. Of those, only concerts don’t require control of a copyright to be an income stream for the IP creator. And musicians like Jason Becker (ALS rendered him a paraplegic) cannot perform.
Again, build a civilized society where you don't starve just because you can't work.
