The question isn’t whether they’d work for free, it’s whether they’d work if it was impossible to generate revenue through enforceable copyrights. We know that

The question isn’t whether they’d work for free, it’s whether they’d work if it was impossible to generate revenue through enforceable copyrights. We know that even under these conditions, some authors would work for free, others would be paid by companies that benefit from their work other than through the sale of licensed copies, and still others would be paid by patrons and governments. It’s impossible to say whether the loss of all new works that don’t fall into these categories would outweigh the gain of all existing creative works becoming available for unlimited free use, but we can be pretty confident that there would still be more new creative works (perhaps of lower average quality) than any person could consume in a lifetime.