alt Hacker NewsAuthors and artists have no basis for payment in the absence of copyright laws. Like, anything they make would be literally free to steal. Literally... 1700s? Late 1600s?
What would be controversial is the current form of copyright that had been extended and expanded multiple times even during lifetime of many of us alive, often said semi-jokingly said to have been forced by Disney to keep Mickey Mouse covered under it until it had finally expired 70 years after the first publication and long after the death of its creator.
Copyright was established for the benefit of publishers, not authors. In the 1600s publishers were licensed, as part of a censorship system; the point was to only give licenses to publishers who followed the censorship rules. It was quite profitable for the publishers because they faced far less competition than they otherwise would.
The censorship system was abolished but the publishers wanted to keep the licensing system, so they came up with a new idea: licensed monopolies to publish specific books.