> It's ridiculous that there are 100 years old works of art created by people who have been dead for three quarters of a century which are still under copyright. You cannot spin this as a positive thing, I'm sorry.
One counter-argument I've seen when I've taken your side is that some works are higher quality for society (in some fuzzy, aggregate sense) because they have gatekeeping that maintains the image of a given copyrightable work.
If we are talking about cultural consumption as a status symbol (or maybe: that a thing having status makes consuming it more enjoyable or more likely)
Well, then there are still the thing that have copyright today!
If you are talking about some cultural space being exausted because of remixing (say, overuse of the mona lisa makes people less interested in it) -- well, this seems not to be the case, but anyway, we could have specific legislation to avoid this effect and still have copies for people to enjoy
(not that I support that, I bet its not a big problem when compared to the massive boon of accessibility)
One counter-argument I've seen when I've taken your side is that some works are higher quality for society (in some fuzzy, aggregate sense) because they have gatekeeping that maintains the image of a given copyrightable work.