People have a right to culture. If you grew up with a story, it’s yours now, no matter how dead the author isn’t. Past works are the foundation for everything you can make.
And if the purpose of copyright is not to encourage new works, burn it to the ground.
That’s an oversimplification. All works are derivative to some extent. There’s a huge difference between taking inspiration from something, to taking the characters and setting from something. Particularly if you’re intending to make a profit.
If an author makes something that a large number of people enjoy, why shouldn’t they be able to make money off it for the rest of their life? Why exactly should an individual give up the rights to their creation simply so that someone else can use their characters and their worlds?
To be clear, I’m talking solely on an individual level. I think the system we have where a corporation can own an idea is very broken. I’m also talking about this from a perspective of the world we currently live in. In an ideal world where money wasn’t the endgame for survival, ideas would flow more freely and nobody would need to care. But that’s not the world we live in.
You can’t sell something to a million people and still own it.
Copyright is a gift, from us to them, to encourage new works, for us. Why would that mean some old fart gets to stop people making new stories for the characters they grew up with? They’re our characters, now. We bought them. That’s what the money was for.
And if thirty years of revenue with zero additional labor required somehow isn’t enough - oh well.
Can you imagine making your argument for any other industry? Why in the name of god would art be the place where doing real good one time is a ticket to retirement? Not farming, not medicine, not engineering. Homeboy wrote a song once, so he gets to ride the gravy train until he fuckin’ dies.
