I don't think one has to go this far. It's already a hard job being an author, and if you make it less well-paid for the median author, we'd get less art, and l

I don't think one has to go this far. It's already a hard job being an author, and if you make it less well-paid for the median author, we'd get less art, and less knowledge shared. However I think one could easily make a case for making it less well-paid for the big winners head of the power-law curve (the Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Mickey Mouse, Star Wars, etc) which extract huge paychecks from the copyright monopoly. I think it's fine to give authors a temporary monopoly of say ten or twenty years, to reward production. The problem is when the modern special-interest-driven capitalist system hooks into this and keeps lobbying to increase the length of copyright, benefitting estates and conglomerates, rather than the initial authors doing the creative work. And the public pays the cost.