I agree, but authors will scream blue murder and claim that you're depriving of their chances of any kind of security in retirement if you do so. Do they have

I agree, but authors will scream blue murder and claim that you're depriving of their chances of any kind of security in retirement if you do so. Do they have a point? There are undoubtedly some creators making money from their old works, but I'd bet the vast majority of creators who do make a living from their work at some point (a small fraction of those who write or compose) make the vast majority of the royalties from their work in the first 20 years of its existence. Even more so when you apply appropriate present values to future royalties. But when I looked for actual evidence to support or refute this point the quality of evidence in the public domain is extremely weak - either anecdata from prominent authors, or very poor-quality aggregate data from economists supporting liberalizing copyright. If I didn't need to earn a living would be fun and useful to do a PhD examining this question properly.