I'd just like to jump in here to point out that most intellectual laborers in the modern world are not paid, at least in terms of a livable wage. Even those intellectual laborers who are paid specifically for intellectual labor, are not paid for writing, for example; they are paid for some other activity with writing as a required side-project.
I'm quite aware that intellectual laborers are underpaid. I'm pointing out that abolishing copyright without any replacement system would make the situation far worse, effectively eliminating many careers.
If this work didn't have much value that would be one thing, but it clearly does. Otherwise people would not be clamoring for access to it. Nobody cares if crap is freely available.
People really want this stuff. They just don't want to pay for it either directly or via any public method. Meanwhile they spend the cost of a median price book or album in 1-2 visits to Starbucks without thinking about it.
The replacement system for copyright is the system that was around pre-copyright: direct funding of works by people who have some interest in their production. Now applicable on a far larger scale via crowdfunding, as showcased by e.g. Kickstarter and IndieGogo (and used successfully to produce a sizeable amount of high-quality, free and open works).
