> how does "life of the author + 50 years" incentivize the author to keep creating? It just incentivizes them to keep exploiting. It is a necessary protection

> how does "life of the author + 50 years" incentivize the author to keep creating? It just incentivizes them to keep exploiting. It is a necessary protection against moral hazard, and a way for artists who may well be poor during their lifetime to be able to leave something behind for their children. In your world, if one wants to print Calvin-peeing-on-things t-shirts without having to deal with legal hurdles, all they'd have to do is shove Bill Watterson into traffic to force his creations into the public domain. There is no point to creating anything if someone else can throw you under an actual bus to immediately claim rights to (and start profiting from) the years of time and effort you spent building the "brand." Forcing a delay of 50 years goes a long way toward discouraging this sort of literal piracy. This is the premise of the current AI debate, only it's forgery at scale instead of manslaughter.