> I don't think creators 'deserve' anything, but I think a hard 10 year period is about okay to the original creators or the publishers to monetize the product, then move on to an another product, or do whatever they want.

If we're going to use terms like "deserve", then why are you deserving of someone else's work? It doesn't sound like you're even arguing that you could build upon that work, you just don't want to have to pay for it. Having some third party selling other people's art work without licensing them isn't exactly the proliferation of the arts typically argued for with lowering the copyright duration.

You're also severely downplaying just how hard it is to earn money from a creation. Bootstrapping a business is a lot of work. It can be years before you earn even a paltry sum. A good chunk of that 10 years is spent earning nothing. Maybe an established player like Disney can turn on a spigot and cash comes out, but that's not how it works for most people. I also don't see how investing in the creation of something that others find valuable is "rent-seeking". You're completely free to ignore that body of work. Nothing is restricting you from creating your own.

You see the free exchange of art without remuneration in this hypothetical future as a way to drive down costs. I see artists saying "why bother?" and an inevitable stifling of art. Most of us aren't independently wealthy or magnanimous enough to work for free.

> If we're going to use terms like "deserve", then why are you deserving of someone else's work?

Let's be honest, copyright is unnatural. Without copyright if I hear a story, what right has anyone else got to tell me I can't tell my version of that story as I remember it to someone else? If I hear a melody, what right does anyone have to tell me that I can't sing it?

That's literally how society and art has worked for as long as humanity has existed. Hearing and retelling. Seeing and replicating. Re-interrupting and re-envisioning.

The idea that certain ideas are forbidden, or that certain notes are owned is ridiculous. It's not normal. It's an invented legal restriction we put on ourselves. Copyright is an imposition on some very basic freedoms, we just all agree that some amount of imposition is worth it to support artists and their art. Art is so valuable to us that we censor ourselves for it.

What I'm seeing with our current copyright system is that it's hurting a lot more than it's helping. Artists are routinely getting screwed over by large corporations, while other artists are silenced entirely. Amazing creative works are prevented from being brought into the world, and have been prevented from even being preserved. We need to strike a better balance between our freedoms to share and use our own culture and supporting artists and supporting art because our current copyright system is doing a terrible job at all of it.

I think there's two different arguments going on. A key difference between today and the two thousand years that came before is you can make a perfect replica of the source material. Selling a bit-for-bit copy of a song or book is fundamentally different than oral traditions of story telling or an acoustic cover of a popular song.

I'm not saying copyright is perfect. DMCA takedowns for songs playing in the background of live newsworthy events or video game play throughs aren't helping the author/creator. Legal battles over songs that coincidentally sound the same are silly to me as well.

I'm less sold on the value of remixing art. It can be done well, but often feels like a lazy attempt at capitalizing on the original creation.

We don't have to agree on any of that. The person I was replying to seemed to be making the argument that copyright terms were bad because he/she/they wanted to buy a copy of whatever on the open market where hypothetically everything is public domain. I can't comprehend the level of entitlement that leads to someone saying they should have free access to another person's work and then claims without evidence that this will spur innovation or creativity. To me, it seems clear the lack of copyright would just rapidly accelerate the decline of the humanities. Artists struggle enough. The patron model of the Renaissance is gone. The modern day minstrel can't afford rent and food. Copyright is central to how they earn a living and about the only protection they have against parasites that add nothing from taking everything.

I'm all for revisiting and revising modern copyright law. I just think tossing it all together is going to hurt society. Whatever new duration we choose should reflect the reality of just how long it can take to build a business/following/audience. Ten years seems way too short; I see artists deciding the risk:reward ratio makes it not worthwhile.

Maybe that means only the "true" artists will persist, but my experience with open source software suggests otherwise. There's some remarkable open source software out there given away freely by volunteers, but there's also a whole body of software that benefits society that only gets written because the rights holder can afford to make an investment that volunteers can't or won't. That works because there's a potential to earn something when all finished.