> None of these are ethical problems if you accept the premise that the author of a work is entitled to be remunerated for the production of said work How do y

> None of these are ethical problems if you accept the premise that the author of a work is entitled to be remunerated for the production of said work How do you figure? The problems still exist; you've just decided to de-prioritize them compared to the remuneration entitlement you posit. Consider this alternative: the author of a work is entitled to be remunerated for anything for which he or she arranges an agreement with someone to remunerate him or her. Period. This would mean it is up to the author to make arrangements for someone to pay him or her when he or she produces something and turns it over to the employer, and that it is then the employer's responsibility to figure out how to make a profit from it by similarly arranging an agreement with someone else (when speaking of a standard employment relationship for authors). > Are you prepared to argue that Ace did Tolkien no harm? You're missing the distinction between direct harm on one hand, and unexpected competition for a monopolized market on the other. From a certain perspective, the harm in the second case is not harm caused by the unexpected competitor, but rather harm caused by the monopolist's failure to account for competition in its business model.