LOL, more imagination. Look, I base my actions on FACTS, not emotions. The "concept of copyright" hasn't changed AT ALL in the time since the Congress passed, and Washington signed, the first copyright act. The only major changes have been very modern ones to reward non-creators like the motion picture and music industry....NOT the individual artists. LOOK IT UP.
"Performance rights organizations" aren't a function of government, nor the copyright laws, nor anything other than the free association of artists. They are irrelevant to this discussion, which is about copyright LAW.
As to "caring" about the life and work of one of the country's seminal "writers" (I thought he was a musician, not a writer)....under the existing copyright laws of his time, many other authors and composers managed to succeed. Foster failed. Why were others successful in their endeavors and he not??
I don't know what your emotional attachment is to Foster, but don't expect me to follow suit. But if you can't summon up the rationality to examine the situation on any other basis than emotion, perhaps "the conservative movement" would be better off without you.
Actually, I think the conservative movement urgently needs more people from the arts and culture and has way too many heartless phiistines - how many angels can dance on the head of a pin — types.
You miscast the conversation when you keep harping on what you call facts — really just a bullying way of not allowing new information into the dialogue. You seem not to even know who Stephen Foster was when you say you thought he was a musician not a writer. (He was both — how is that for a fact.) To me that disqualifies you to even have a dialogue about him. He was and remains, one of the most important Americans, ever. Cities should be named after him. Your attitude about him in this exchange — cold, unfeeling, uninformed and disparaging — exemplifies all that is wrong with the conservative movement and why more people from arts and culture who don’t want to be on the left don’t come over to the right.
The conversation was not only about law — it started with the posting of a statement by the pope and went on to the reason for and ethics of the idea of ownership and use of material and the protection of artists. Performance rights, which are linked to copyright, were not protected in the 19th century the way they are now. Music is different from other types of arts because it is a pie with 200% — the author’s rights and the publishing rights. There was a huge change in the law when the author’s rights became non-transferable — the publishing can be sold over and over again. Prior to this change, thousands of authors /musicians were cheated out of their rights.