I don't follow this argument. Principles can't be replicated perfectly in reality, therefore they don't exist? By that logic, there is no actual "copyright" as some people will be copying material and getting away with it.

>the people who own the machinery end up owning and controlling EVERYTHING, and the creator gets nothing.

This is proven wrong through any single example to the contrary. One example is ticketed book readings by the original author, or a ticketed concert by the original band. Many ways to capture income for generating content without copyright enforcement mechanisms.

>what's going on with Stable Diffusion and Copilot (and perhaps Spotify and Google before them) -- the people who own the machinery end up owning and controlling EVERYTHING, and the creator gets nothing.

Is this an argument for or against copyright? Does Google get most of its operating revenue within nations without copyright law? Or is the argument they are violating copyright law and that's why the creator isn't getting anything?

And there are counter examples, where a creator sells/relinquishes copyright (often because it's the only way for them to end up with anything) and ends up losing total access to income streams they could have had if copyright didn't exist, and the machinery owner ends up owning everything and locking the creator out through copyright law. The confusion also lies in the fact creator and copyright holder is not the same thing.

Again, for better or worse --without IP, the primary beneficiaries of "creativity" become the distributors. Opposing this is the whole point of copyright, and thus why it should defended in theory and heavily reformed in practice.