People are willing to pay

Copyright was meant to make desirable things. like music, books, plays, etc profitable so people would do them. A very large fraction of the economy would collapse without it.

I *could* read LWN to free but chose to pay. Why? I want LWN to exist next year too and paying makes that more probable. If paying was difficult would have done so? No.

The UK music industry managed to show sanity a while ago by suing *uploaders* and their major customers aka downloaders.