I don't see why. I don't see why should they have the exclusive right to sell it anymore, and sue anyone that creates a derivative work based on their work older than 10 years.

Also Girl Genius still would have a lot of options to make money of it. I just think derivative work should be able to appear, and more than 10 years old stuff should be free as in freedom and as in free beer. And we, as a society could choose this by modifying our laws.

They would only lose ownership to their earlier stripa by now. Also anything rlse would be fan fiction. It wouldn’t remove the primacy of author created works. I mean if I create a XXX Fables movie no one will consider it authentic or canon.

"Only" handwaves away a lot. It would put the characters into public domain and rob the authors of the ability to sustain themselves selling collections of early strips.

"No one will consider it authentic or canon." Citation very much needed. When there's demand for something, people will take what's offered. I would be fine with some sort of easy licensing scheme that would allow others to write stories, etc., in someone else's universe / with their characters... but they should see a taste. Especially when we're talking about mid-tier or lower-tier creators who are probably depending heavily on that large body of work to keep the lights on.

[delayed]

There's a lot of Girl Genius stuff on AO3. The Foglios (authors) seem okay with fanwork existing (there's even a fanfic-discussion channel on the semi-official Girl Genius Discord server). Of course, stuff on AO3 doesn't make money, which may be a sticking point.

> It would put the characters into public domain and rob the authors of the ability to sustain themselves selling collections of early strips.

That's not true. It might make it harder to make as much money, but there's nothing that says the author can't still profit from selling something after it's in the public domain. I've paid for works in the public domain multiple times, sometimes directly to the author of the work.

Creators have a massive advantage when selling their own stuff. They can include things like signed copies and extras that no one else ever could. Fans want to support the creators of the things they love because they want more of it.

Maybe not authentic or canon but with proper execution and marketing it could make a profit 10 times bigger than an authentic and canonical movie.

If someone creates a new version so good that vastly outclasses the original version it deserves to make that profit. That's kind of the point. We want more amazing creative works. That's what copyright was for: to encourage the creation of new works.

We've already been robbed of all the amazing creative works that might have been but never were because of excessive copyright restrictions. It's hurting artists and it's hurting our culture.

We want copyright to give authors a chance to profit for a limited time, but it we need it to be much less excessive and restrictive so that new works and new artists can thrive.

They would not just lose ownership of the strips. Ownership of the characters and world setting would also be open. Other people would be free to publish stories using their characters.