Sadly, they're just following in the footsteps of every large media/publishing/music conglomerate that already screwed over the vast majority of artists/musicians/writers. For every Taylor Swift striking it rich, there's 999,999 who can't even pay their bills with what their copyright gets them.

I don't always agree with Doctorow, but he's written a lot of good stuff on how stronger copyright won't help broke artists. Even just today, it turns out: https://pluralistic.net/2026/08/18/enron-corpus/#sign-here

Then let's make humans pay royalties to every author from whom they ever learned something, even if it was offered freely to them, only fair?

Indeed. If I take somebody's work, transform it somewhat and sell it, I should pay royalties (unless the author explicitly allowed me to do so). That is exactly the case.