Using today’s copyright laws, one can copyright an ‘idea’ or ‘phrase’, not a work or invention. This has been done usually in the high tech field and has had a chilling affect on development: why work on a project if someone has copyrighted the ‘idea’ but has not created a prototype or actually invented/developed the item resulting from an abstract idea?
I am a firm believer that copyrights should be limited in scope to true works or inventions, not a phrase (an exception would be a commercial or marketing copyright) or abstract idea which I believe is chilling on industry.
As an artist I would be very reluctant to have my creations duplicated and sold without stringent copyright laws in existence. My heirs should be able to benefit for some period of time as I am now 60-years old.
Two hundred years ago, people did not live as long as today’s population. Some inventions take a while to become established and earn money for the inventor, or the artist/writer who created it. Perhaps 14-years should be extended to some greater length of time, say 25-years, with an extension of another 15-years? That, to me, would be equitable.
The change in life expectancy hasn’t been that great - the statistics were skewed by an extremely high infant immortality rate. The expected lifespan of an adult of age 20 in 1850 was 60 years. Nowadays, it’s around 76 years. So, only a 16 year increase.