If an author doesn't earn out their advance, they are almost certainly making a lot more than "a fraction of a percentage point" of the revenue.

A few new music artists do sign contracts so one-sided it's absurd, I agree, and they wind up never making any money at all or even paying some of the costs themselves. But that's usually because they let a big record label screw them, which would have happened regardless of the cut they thought they were going to get.

Those same big record labels are still paying several percent to any successful artists who have a half-decent agent/lawyer. More importantly, for the purposes of this discussion, small/indie record labels don't have the power to play those kinds of legal games even if they want to. Again, anyone signed to one is probably getting a lot more than that "fraction of a percentage point".

So, while I agree with you that the major distributors often offer little value today while taking far more of a cut than they deserve, I stand by my original point that it's silly to attack copyright because the original artists only get <1% as a cut. That just isn't true for anyone successful who doesn't let themselves get played.