> Without that system, the 75-year-old author would earn drastically less than the 20-year-old, despite creating the same value. Less perhaps, but drastically

> Without that system, the 75-year-old author would earn drastically less than the 20-year-old, despite creating the same value. Less perhaps, but drastically less? You'd need to justify that. Even big hits generally make most of their money in their first few years. And creating the same value is also a claim you'd need to justify. Maybe society legitimately prefers works from younger authors; maybe a work from a live author really is more valuable than a dead one. Maybe there are unique things that a living author can do with an in-copyright work they wrote in the past, that increase the value of that work, and we want to incentivise those things.