Copyright is essential to creative output. Authors and creators need to be able to profit from their work. However, having a copyright for almost 200 years is completely ridiculous. In fact I think the lifetime of the author might be a bit of a stretch in and of itself. Their descendents collecting paychecks on the back of their work for multiple generations is ridiculous and it stifles creativity by walling off whole worlds of ideas. The original copyright laws, in the US at least, were only for about 25 years.
Copyright is essential to creative output. Authors and creators need to be able to profit from their work. However, having a copyright for almost 200 years is completely ridiculous. In fact I think the lifetime of the author might be a bit of a stretch in and of itself. Their descendents collecting paychecks on the back of their work for multiple generations is ridiculous and it stifles creativity by walling off whole worlds of ideas. The original copyright laws, in the US at least, were only for about 25 years.
You might be interested in reading the story of copyright and why it was invented. Spoiler: it wasn’t to protect artists’ interests.