Yeah, I'm really sure that 50 years ago the photographer thought "F. it, if I take this picture, in 50 years some dude will be able to make a pixelated impressi

Yeah, I'm really sure that 50 years ago the photographer thought "F. it, if I take this picture, in 50 years some dude will be able to make a pixelated impression of it, so it's not worth my time. Oh no, wait. Copyright will protect my work from that, so I'm good to go." The purpose of Copyright law is to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", not make creators feel like they are entitled to total control over their work. The question is whether the progress of the Arts, as a whole, is promoted by preventing people from creating derivative works. You act like copyright is all promotion, but there is of course an opposite effect, too, by preventing people from creating derivative works. Why do you think the copyright clause explicitly specifies that copyrights are "for a limited time"?