> at the end of the day, copyright is about protecting the ability to generate profit
That's what is has turned into, but it was never the point. The point was to promote the creation of new creative works. That's it. The way to do that was making sure that creators had a limited time where they could exclusively profit from their efforts, but the creation or protection of profit was never what copyright was all about.
Today, creating/protecting profit is what it's been abused to accomplish though, often hurting the creation of new works, and most often not even for the benefit of the actual creators.
20 years was more than enough time for people to profit from their works when worldwide distribution was basically impossible, advertising was a joke compared to what we have today, and it was a massive investment to publish at all. Now you can publish for close to nothing and advertise and distribute worldwide in seconds. 20 years is at least 2x too long. 10 years seems far more reasonable to me.
If we're reworking the system we also need to make sure that DRM doesn't prevent works from being useful after they've been returned to the public domain. That's a consideration they didn't have to worry about when copyright protections were being drafted, but it's increasingly going to lock us out of our own culture.
That's what is has turned into, but it was never the point. The point was to promote the creation of new creative works. That's it. The way to do that was making sure that creators had a limited time where they could exclusively profit from their efforts, but the creation or protection of profit was never what copyright was all about.
Today, creating/protecting profit is what it's been abused to accomplish though, often hurting the creation of new works, and most often not even for the benefit of the actual creators.
20 years was more than enough time for people to profit from their works when worldwide distribution was basically impossible, advertising was a joke compared to what we have today, and it was a massive investment to publish at all. Now you can publish for close to nothing and advertise and distribute worldwide in seconds. 20 years is at least 2x too long. 10 years seems far more reasonable to me.
If we're reworking the system we also need to make sure that DRM doesn't prevent works from being useful after they've been returned to the public domain. That's a consideration they didn't have to worry about when copyright protections were being drafted, but it's increasingly going to lock us out of our own culture.