Copyright started out in the USA at 14 years plus another optional 14 year extension. I am going by my memory here.

The purpose of the law was to balance public and private interests.

The public benefits from uninhibited copying. Private interests benefit from a monopoly on copying. The law at first recognized both of those interests as legitimate, which is why copyrights were relatively short at first.

Then the rich companies like Disney lobbied the govrnment to change all that.

Now copyright is something like lifetime of an author (who can be a corporation and does not even need to be a human) plus something like 150 years, plus/minus.

Basically the interests of the public were tossed out the window.

The public libraries were and still are the bullwark providing free access to copies, but the private interests hate the libraries too.

I don't want the artists to starve. Right now the biggest holders, abusers and beneficiaries of the heinously immoral (as it currently stands) copyright regime are the giant gorporations, not the starving artists.

Plus, now a new crop of giant corporations decided to ignore copyright that was recently serving primarily other giant corporations. I hate all of them, and all of IT. Fuck them all.

Copyright law needs a reform now.

• 10 year term, no extensions.
• Can only be owned by the actual humans and never the legal entities. One exception is an estate of a human who passed on suddenly, who may hold the copyright for the benefit of the author's family.
• No sales or transfers permitted.
• All licensing is mandatorily non-exclusive to prevent the giant corps from hoarding rights by forcing the authors to give them exclusivity. Basically an author should always be able to make new deals, full stop.

So in summary, center the human author, and balance the public and the private iterests.

And while we wait, harrrr, harrr, harrr, sail the high seas.

P.S. Fashion is one form of creative output not covered by any monopoly protection. The fashion industry is doing fine.