This, to me, is another tragedy of the overly long copyright term. The author even somewhat acknowledges this ("I’ve even advocated for ... copyright terms to .

This, to me, is another tragedy of the overly long copyright term. The author even somewhat acknowledges this ("I’ve even advocated for ... copyright terms to ... 75 years in order to limit that control"). I do respect Watterson for his stance but at the same time, I look at the effect of his stance and it's made Calvin and Hobbes inaccessible to a new generation so much so that I would guess that anyone under 30 thinks that Calvin and Hobbes has something to do with redneck culture or "southern pride" because of all the bootleg "Calvin pissing" stickers. Ironically, Watterson even acknowledges this ("long after the strip is forgotten, those decals are my ticket to immortality.") but still won't even consider letting up control. The author talks about Sherlock Holmes without acknowledging that one of the big successes of Sherlock Holmes is almost surely that it's in the public domain, which allows endless reboots from the same source material. We see Austen's work re-invigorated because it's in the public domain and I imagine we'll soon see more Howard and Lovecraft's work re-imagined because of it. There is a sprawling culture of re-interpretations from the Potterverse, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, etc., we just call them "fan-fic" without any real legal way for all those artists to keep producing content under that umbrella. I would like to see an article that frames this stance not as some show of integrity but touches on the the deeper discussion of the social contract an artist has with the society they live in. The government puts the weight behind the artist to allow them to have a monopoly for a period of time with the understanding that, eventually, the artist has a duty to put their work in the public domain for everyone to use. By creating that term to be more than a century, this creates a void for media that that's older than 20 years but still not in the public domain, as it's not relevant enough to keep producing but not free enough for other people to experiment with and re-invigorate.