zlacker

Actually I was replying to both of you (sadly not an obvious structural way to do that on HN), but perhaps I should have made it clearer that the "finite" concept PP was trying to get across actually seems to be scarcity - land is scarce, paper books less so - and intangible goods such as ebooks are not scarce at all (DRM attempts notwithstanding.)

Authorship may be scarce - costly and resource intensive (LLMs notwithstanding) as you describe, while copying and distribution of intangible goods like ideas or digital media is essentially free and unlimited, as I suspect PP was trying to say.

As you correctly note, the constitutional copyright bargain permits a limited time monopoly in return for (hopefully) advancing "the progress of science and the useful arts."