0_o

Wall...of..te..text.

In Soviet Russia Dreamcast play you!

Nice read btw.

Regardless of whether or not there's a profit to be made, people will create, because it's what they're driven to do...
Creative people will always feel the need to express themselves through art. Whether it be through movies, literature, music, or mixed mediums (such as video games), these creative people will always create when given the opportunity.

You can find examples of this throughout society... thousands of people play free shows with their band, put together free art shows, and air free student movies. Thousands more create free to play flash based games and post them on the internet for anyone with a computer and an ISP to play. Hell, even Microsoft has Aegis Wing. All created with love for free, because the people that created them wanted to play, to paint, to record. To program.

I'm of the belief that the RIAA will be a thing of the past in another 5-15 years due to digital distribution of music. Yet musicians will continue to write, record, play and distribute their own music through the use of computers. Any time you try to sell an art, it's bound to eventually fail. I'd like to see artists brought on to a government program that would pay them to create, and would make all forms of art readily accessible to anyone, because as you say "Culture is the result of people, and people are entitled to it. All the price tags in between keep too many from participating in the inherent rights of a societal conversation...".

tl;dr version: I agree, let's do more to make this the standard rather than the exception