> Instead you're left with a bunch of low-quality rip off sites that have nothing original of their own. Isn't that what we mostly have now? Before the net wa

> Instead you're left with a bunch of low-quality rip off sites that have nothing original of their own. Isn't that what we mostly have now? Before the net was commercialized, it was mostly people sharing things they had created or discovered and talking about things that interested them - original content. People would also post interesting scientific papers, books, etc. and discuss them. Once people decided to monetize the net it filled with spam and duplicated content alongside payperclick ads. People started cranking out 'original content' that isn't very original and doesn't have much content either just to make a few bucks on the ads. Those papers and books that used to be shared became imprisoned behind paywalls. The volume increased a lot, but signal-to-noise ratio dropped significantly. That's not really an argument to eliminate copyright, but vigilant legions of lawyers were never been needed to produce content, suing people doesn't increase its quality, and the net wouldn't necessarily be a worse place if a lot of that was gone. At least some places are opening up and starting to share educational content.