I understand IP laws, rewarding the authors, incentivizing future research, etc. etc. But intuitively and conceptually, there is a hypothetical scenario in whi

I understand IP laws, rewarding the authors, incentivizing future research, etc. etc. But intuitively and conceptually, there is a hypothetical scenario in which all of humanity's knowledge is ~free for anyone to access instantaneously and from anywhere. The current scenario in which every meaningful piece of academic output is heavily paywalled makes for a disheartening comparison.