Andrew Sullivan has some of the smartest readers in the world. (I should know, I'm one of them!) He has a series of blog posts talking about intellectual property laws and how the world is changing in that respect. One of his readers said this:

This assumption needs to be examined because it treats the intellectual property laws solely as an incentive to lay one golden egg.  If as an artist I can garner outsized profit from one work, how does that provide an incentive to create additional works?  If my successors can live exclusively off the profit of my work, what incentive is there for them to create ANY artistic work?  Why does an artist need to be so well compensated that as a society we ask that he does no other productive work?  One can name many, many artists -- Wallace Stevens comes immediately to mind, but there are countless others --  who created great art while making a living doing other things.  Contrast Stevens's life with, well I won't name anybody, but the artist who creates one good, maybe great, work and then spends his time living off royalties and sleeping with starlets.  This is defensible on moral or economic grounds?

When I first read it, it pissed me off. Writing is work. Writers should get paid for their work.  I'm happy to include all artists under that umbrella.

Then I had my second thought. The market decides how much a thing is worth. If there are millions of books, stories and articles out there how much is each one worth? 90% of everything is worthless trash but the remaining 10% is still a very large number. How much is each book, story or article worth? What if it isn't enough to live on? I've arranged my life so I don't have to sell my stuff to live, but I certainly would like to for pride's sake if nothing else.

Oh, and you can trust me on this one--rich or poor I won't be sleeping with any starlets.