IIRC, the idea is to help the (dependents of the) Kurt Cobains of the world: artists who die young and still have loved ones who can now depend on the revenue from the copyrighted works for at least 20 years. But IANAL, so I could be way off.
Builders and doctors have regular salaries (or at least are paid in full upon completion of the work they do). The value of a creative work is in the income stream it creates over time. If you need the money now, you can recoup that by selling the rights. But it's hard to sell rights to an income stream that could disappear tomorrow if you were hit by a bus.
I'm pretty sure about 90% of professional creatives (artists, animators... programmers fall under almost all the criteria, too) are paid a salary as well. They work for DC, Disney, Amazon, etc. Tons working in either direct ad agencies or in the marketing departments of all kinds of business. All on a payroll.
Yeah, but they aren't who we're talking about here. That's called "work for hire" and it doesn't fall under an author's-life-plus-X-years rule. It has a fixed term.
Can you imagine the chaos if, every time someone died, everything they did for every company they worked for immediately fell into the public domain?
I agree. We as a society should have this discussion, no one wants their children to live in poverty and people, while they live, transfer their value to their children - so someone who dies early has missed the opportunity to do the same to their children. But, the fact that the Waltons exist is just stupid.
Because they have family. 20 years, so you and your dependents can enjoy the fruits of your labour, even if you died of cancer, or old age, or you got hit by a bus 2 weeks after publishing your best work yet at 32. Don't have a will? Then sure, have the copyright expire. But if you have family, and they're in your will, they are most certainly entitled to those fruits until the copyright expires, just like how they can get any other business non-copyright-workers can set up. 20 years seems perfectly fair for that.
And if that means you "leave a legacy" for 20 years, that your family can cash out on: no different from someone leaving their company or their land titles to their kids. Except that company or land will stick around a lot longer.
Except when you give a business to your kids, they need to run it or pay someone to run it for them and still manage that. With copyrights that make money, your kids would not need to run anything, just collect the money. For one you need to work, for the other not nearly as much. That doesn't sound too fair to me.
The rightsholders still have to be proactive about marketing to maintain the popularity of the work and hire lawyers for enforcement. There's a lot of copyrighted work from the late 20th century on YouTube where apparently nobody is doing the work on either front because the videos have been up for years and have like 900 views. But I guess if something suddenly became a cult hit, it could be worthwhile to sue whoever instigated/profited from it.
Unfortunately the rightsholders tend to be publishing companies, not the kids, so the kids would still only get pennies on the dollar in royalties, if that. And technology is gradually making it easier for publishers to enforce their "rights" on even the stupidest, least popular works.
You have to reprint the thing so you can sell new copies of it. Or persuade a publisher that it's worth them going through the hassle and expense of reprinting it. Or hassle with getting it into newfangled distribution services so you can sell electronic copies of it.
Trust me, this is work, I am an independent artist who has a thing that's out of print that she now regularly gets people asking her to reprint, and I am so damn burnt out from my last Kickstarter that I'm ignoring this ever-growing mass of people eager to give me money.
To promote the progress of science and useful arts.
Estates are things. I'm sure a fair number of artists have been encouraged to publish towards the end of their life to support their children or causes they believe in.
Actually, since copyright is life + x years, an artist that wishes to leave his descendants with a source of income off of his works is better off creating a work and leaving it to them to slightly tweak and then publish as "by FAMOUS_ARTIST and his second cousin's daughter".
That way, copyright will last for the life of the involved descendant as well.
So I'm doubtful if anyone would publish anything just for the same of supplying for their children. It's just not the best way to achieve the goal.
Why are we okay with letting society and social safety nets off the hook of providing for these families.
What if someone barely making a living dies tragically early? If it's too bad for their family, why does that artist's family get a free ride - how did they contribute to what the artist created.
In addition to the other replies, I suppose it also removes some of the incentive for foul play if I want to use a copyrighted work and don't want to wait for a natural death.
The likes of Stan Lee should be able to pass their rights to their children, like you would a land deed. I think that's fair. Their grandchildren and/or businesses, probably not.
... why exactly do they need copyright, again?