By your argument, I should be able to directly copy a book and sell it myself. The work was already done! What's more, they were fed by everyone's creativity, s

By your argument, I should be able to directly copy a book and sell it myself. The work was already done! What's more, they were fed by everyone's creativity, so of course I should be able to sell an exact copy. In reality, the short-sighted greed is allowing widespread theft of intellectual property; do you think the number of writers would increase or decrease if there were no protections against content theft? If you have such "immense gratitude", pay for the work.