How could we have gotten great works like Canterbury Tales or Beowulf without rent-seeking copyright protectionism?

I am not a die-hard supporter of IP protection laws, but your examples are classic survivorship bias, as well as falling victim to the broken windows fallacy.

	▲	kiba a year ago \| parent [-]
		It is not a given that we should incentivize the production of cultural good beyond of what is already achievable. I should note that there is already strong intrinsic motivation to create and there are already too many works to read, watch, or listen, and a lot of slops created clearly to make money. People are willing to accept deplorable working conditions to pursue their dreams, such as developing video games. Since I do improv, most of the value I created are on the spot and ephemeral anyway and I basically perform for free anyway. I would stand to gain if people go out to theaters and other avenue as opposed to consuming content on netflix.