> Your example of a song used in an ad: generally the advertiser would just purchase the rights to the song outright, and so the creator wouldn't necessarily re

> Your example of a song used in an ad: generally the advertiser would just purchase the rights to the song outright, and so the creator wouldn't necessarily really get anything like a 'share' of the value created by use of their work, but just a flat fee. Sure, they don't literally get a percentage of the value created with their work, but the basis for thinking they deserve to be paid at all is that they created a thing that is being used to create value for someone else. Furthermore, I think that if you drill down into the justification for why creators should be paid at all (despite the fact that someone else using their work does not deprive the creator of it's use for themself), you'll find that it is ultimately tied to the fact that a given creative work simply could not exist without it's creator. Literally no other person in existence is capable of making that exact work. And when that is the justification for why a creator deserves to have some control over the use of their work, I think life of the creator is a reasonable timeframe for the creator to maintain legal control over the use of their work (accepting that it may not be justified for this control to be absolute). I think reasonable people could argue that such a timeframe is too long by pointing to issues of public benefit, but I don't think life of the creator is completely unjustified or unreasonable on its face.