Comment by snohobro
I don’t think copyright shouldn’t exist at all, I think the general consensus in this topic has been that the length of copyright protection is longer than is considered reasonable.
You don’t have to sell the prints if you don’t want to. But if someone else does fulfill that market demand by selling or giving away your photographs after those photographs have entered into public domain, that’s a win for all those who wished to enjoy your art. Without having to visit that particular restaurant. The length of time to get to public domain is the issue at hand.
I want you to make money on your photography. It’s a good incentive to keep doing that scope of work and more art in the world is a win for humanity. But if you haven’t been able to recuperate losses and make profit on a particular photo after 70 years, I don’t think it’s going to happen for ya.
If I understand this correctly, your assertion is that me selling you a print 14 years ago (or 28) would now give you (or anyone) permission to put that on T-shirts and sell them despite that I'm still making prints of that photograph and selling it?
Aside on this is that it disincentivizes me to display anything that I don't want to sell and think I can make money on during the copyright protected period.
I have hundreds of photographs... the idea that I'd need to pay some amount to re-register them (individually?) extend their copyright protection is likewise absurd. (Compare : do you pay to re-register the copyright on each file in an open source repository ... because each file has a different copyright on it ... or the entire collection? But what is a logical collection of photographs?)
I have photographs that have made more money in the past 5 years than they have in the 30 years prior.
Moving things to the public domain faster than the artists who created the material would likely make them less likely to produce, publish, or sell things that would enter the public domain before they could benefit from them would result in the material becoming a patronage based system or the material never being created at all.
I do not want all artwork to be locked behind a patronage system. e.g. "Here's my patreon - all members at the $20 level get a high quality digital image each week." That would be bad for art as a whole... you'd never see it at an art festival or in a gallery or a restaurant wall.
I realize this is becoming more and more popular... but I don't think it is good. Shorter copyright terms would make this even more prevalent because of the difficulties being able to make money as an artist off the material. The long tail of a photographer's library is very much a thing and part of one's livelihood. Cutting off that tail prematurely doesn't put more material into the public domain - it results in less material being created.