In this case, the "rights" would not be those of a book publisher but those of a patron/sponsor. Being among the persons or corporate entities who e.g. J.K. Rowling officially acknowledges as the "sponsors" of her work would create a lot of clout, and with that a lot of very real value. Authors used to be funded like that before the current copyright-based system became predominant; it's not just a theoretical model.

In the days before the Berne convention, US publishers copied British books without paying the authors, which of course made the British authors unhappy. In some cases, because there was a bit of a first mover advantage, publishers would send their agents to London to acquire copies of the plates for popular authors as quickly as possible, and were willing to pay a fee for this.

The entire point of the Kickstarter model is to solve collective action problems of that kind. It's in the individual's interest to contribute, because otherwise the project might not reach its funding threshold, or might have trouble reaching the 'stretch' goal that some care about. This ensures that the 'funding' issue is solved, at least.

While true, and I am willing to work with (and contribute to) software licensed by GPL and other free software licenses, my own programs are all under the public domain, because I am against copyright. I believe in reducing rather than increasing legislation, in general, so that would mean is better to abolish copyright. Even so, if copyright is abolished and then someone does copy it and won't release the source code, someone can legally reverse engineer it anyways, give them a bad reputation, or whatever else it may be. Furthermore, abolishing copyright would not mean abolishing trademarks, so you can still refuse to grant permission to use your trademark. (I also think that in addition to abolishing copyright, patents should also be abolished. Trademarks should not be abolished, but perhaps its scope should be reduced.)