I would offer a different perspective. For shows like Seinfeld, sure, you might be right. But think of copyright in the context, not of the top of the food chai

I would offer a different perspective. For shows like Seinfeld, sure, you might be right. But think of copyright in the context, not of the top of the food chain, but for, say, a mid-level author. Not Stephen King - but someone who makes their living by writing books. A sometimes big part of their total compensation is the royalties their works generate, sometimes many years into the future. Authors will often have an entire back catalogue of books that are still out there generating money, which is what always them to continue working on writing new books. Or take for example the indie game developer that was featured in HN posts for a few weeks. He lays out the calculations for how much money his games make, and a significant part of it is a calculation of how much the game will make over its lifetime - not in the first two years, but over many years. And this includes e.g. spinoffs. Now, I'm not saying 95-120 years is the "correct" duration - I'd probably say less, as well. But it's not obvious at all to me that 20 years is enough time - it's probably not.