> Are you going to tell them they have no right to their own work anymore 20 years after they had one of their most successful releases? I work in software, as

> Are you going to tell them they have no right to their own work anymore 20 years after they had one of their most successful releases? I work in software, as I assume many of us do. I don't assume an inherent right to gain perpetual income from my work. The vast majority of all employment operates this way. I'm not sure how that reality doesn't undermine the idea that there exists some inherent right to prevent other people from, say, singing a song they heard (by getting a local authority to recognize you as the author of that song, and then stop others from singing that song and making money from their performances, by putting them in jail or fining them if they do, for example). It's important to make a clear distinction between the kind of "right" copyright represents and, for example, the right to free expression. The underpinnings of the rights are different. We assume that everyone legitimately starts off with the right to free expression. It's not so clear that everyone starts off with some inherent legitimate right to prevent some dude two doors down from re-singing a song you came up with and sung to him. It seems much more reasonable to view copyright as an artificial right: something we create to promote certain ends. The state is in no way obligated to provide the establishment of copyright (it's not a real "right"), so the justification for its bounds is entirely pragmatic: what benefit it has to society in general.