Copyright law is not supposed to create fairness.

It is supposed to benefit society as a whole. If protection is too long, limited access to (and reuse of) existing work reduces the benefits of having a law. If protection is too short, some works may not get created due to the lack of incentives.

Someone attempted to calculate an optimal duration, and concluded it was about 15 years: https://rufuspollock.com/papers/optimal_copyright_term.pdf (Related article: https://medium.com/basic-income/the-zombification-of-intelle...)

I would recommend reading James Boyle's 'The Public Domain'. It's available free from his site on a creative commons license[1]. He makes a great argument about the development of IP laws, similar to the points you have made.

[1] http://thepublicdomain.org/thepublicdomain1.pdf

15 years sounds fine.

I guess I was talking about just a couple.

If the hypothetical movie studio from your example could not have used the song because of copyright, they would not have used the song, leaving the artist just as bereft of benefits as before – there is no change for the artist either way. If the movie studio can pick the best song from all available non-copyrighted songs since there are a large number of them, the artist will still not benefit but the movie studio might make a better movie, benefiting them and thereby the economy and society as a whole, even if nothing changes for the artist.

But now we have movie studios who are (generally) paying for rights to use a song that was popular a few years ago, or they're paying for original soundtracks.

Reduce copyrights to just a few years and Hollywood, with all the parasites in it, would just lift songs like there's no tomorrow and further dodge paying a cent to the artists involved.

Perhaps, but we'd be free to use their content as we saw fit too. Overall, I think reduced copyright would benefit the smaller artists (who might not be able to afford to license prior art now).

I am OK with using this logic when it comes to individuals using media for non-profit purposes, but movie studios are out to make money. Saying "if it didn't exist they wouldn't have used it" is taking away from the final composed project that includes many artists and mediums.

So differentiate between copyright periods for personal use and commercial use.

Many countries used to have strong explicit exemptions for personal use, but even just making it shorter in time for personal use would make a huge difference.

Movies and TV use copyrighted music all the time - they just pay the copyright holder for licensing it.

Nonsense, they may well have paid a license fee. As frequently happens now.

No one goes to see a movie just because it features 1 song.

The use of licensed music is a critical component in many movies. Just consider Donnie Darko or Goodfellas.

well, I did see the movie "bohemian rapsody" mainly to hear the music...

I always questioned whether we should be paying artists for music at all. The fact is, song writers don’t make most of their money from recordings. It’s merchandise and concerts. This would solve most of the copy right issues because someone recorded it with a cell phone.

More than that, we’ve seen cases such as the Louis CK video release where he asked politely for people to pay and they did.

You don't have to pay artists for music if you don't listen to it.