[–] Wahaha 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
To be fair, copyright is completely arbitrary and there's little reason involved, if any. It's all about making the most money. I also don't think it's a coincidence that the works that are considered to be most important culturally are made before copyright was invented or have their copyright expired. Same reason open source software spread around. You can just reuse it and keep it relevant without any hassle.
[–] scandalous-goat ago
That's a pretty naive, in my opinion. We need to make money, why are there some crafts that can't make money, or have their revenue restricted? And what makes you think there would be any motivation to make works without a possibility of revenue.
You bring up open-source software, how much truly useful code is written by unpaid volunteers and what is the quality of that code? In reality, there's a lot of programmers working on open-source project that are paid, be it from IBM (redhat) and other corporations or from foundations.
Good will and ideals will leave you hungry.
[–] Wahaha ago
Same reason works got created prior to copyright, which isn't even 300 years old and has only been as strict as it is now for some 50 years or so. Original copyright expired 12 years after publication and actually lead to less books being published, since the incentives changed.
The reason there are crafts that can't make money is because those crafts aren't worth paying money for. Just because you put effort into something doesn't mean people owe you money for it. Unless you're a communist, then that's exactly how it's supposed to work. But since communism also has to deal with reality that's not how it will unfold.
You're asking the wrong questions about open source. The correct question would be to ask why money is spend on people developing open source software. Because the answer tells you a business model that doesn't rely on a state to enforce copyright. Enforcing copyright isn't cheap, but it's basically useless, since there aren't a lot of people acknowledging copyright in it's current form as a just law.