We don't need copyright anymore
Copyright was never about rights holders making money. That was merely a necessary side effect to ensure the primary purpose: ensure that people write their ideas and make them available and widely read. Copyright was to spread ideas, because a society flowing with ideas is a healthy and growing society.
The web proves that people will write high quality ideas (and shit) for free. Other people will read those ideas, and society is healthier for it.
So, eliminate copyright. We no longer need individual temporary monopolies to promote the spread of ideas, people have found other ways to make money from their ideas that don't require copyright, and they have found other benefits besides money.
We're wasting resources enforcing copyright. It was never about rights holders. We've figured out how to spread ideas without copyright.
Kill the copyright.
"Copyright was never about rights holders making money."
Here's a quote from the Statute of Anne:
"Whereas Printers, Booksellers, and other Persons, have of late frequently taken the Liberty of Printing... Books, and other Writings, without the Consent of the Authors... to their very great Detriment, and too often to the Ruin of them and their Families:"
Also copyright doesn't protect ideas.
Also the "high quality ideas (and shit)" are not free. High quality work is expensive, but may be free to you because they are subsidised. A model not without its problems.
My apologies for having a very US-centric view-- it's all I know. The US Constitution says: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
I have a problem with how the law has been twisted by the copyright industry to render "limited Times" to mean a virtual eternity. Fix that and I have no beef with copyright. The public domain is important and needs to be nourished. The "Founders' copyright", with respect to duration, has been shown by multiple studies to be more than sufficient to create economic incentive while, at the same time, not starving the public domain.
Not sure I agree with you, copyright laws were created with a profit motive - to protect author's work from being stolen or inappropriately used.
Without copyrights, what incentive does an author have to produce new work? Someone will take it and redistribute it, take credit for it, or otherwise profit from it.
There are lots of great works produced today which simply would not be produced without copyright. For example, Pixar movies.
A world with Pixar movies is better than a world without them.