

If we didn’t have copyright then people wouldn’t be able to justify putting effort into creating content because they wouldn’t be guaranteed financial compensation for the time and effort they put in.
The irony of saying this on Lemmy. Lemmy is piece of software developed and distributed for free to people who host it for free. If somebody truly wants to make something they will create it even without profit incentive.
That’s not really relevant to the discussion. The number of users doesn’t matter. The point is that people will still create things even if there’s no money in doing it.
Jellyfin is another example of something I use every day that is completely developed for free. The is no difference whether 100 people or 100 million people use it. It exists because the people who built it want it to exist.