> A corporation would just contract you to make a work

In that case, by definition, the artist was paid.

The last round of strikes by the writers and actors unions were about royalties.

Being paid for a spec or a per diem while making the movie can be peanuts. Big name actors and writers make percentages on the backend.

I'm not concerned about that. And if I was, why should artists be treated differently to anyone else who chooses to charge for the product of their efforts? Copyright didn't exist before 1710. Art sure did though. A protection of 7 years seems fine by that measure. Go make some more art after that expires. Or even before!

>> Copyright didn't exist before 1710. Art sure did though. A protection of 7 years seems fine by that measure.

This seems utterly arbitrary. I fail to understand your logic here.

Please accept my apologies. I mean that the ostensible reason for copyright is to protect and thereby incentivise the production of artistic work. By extension, without copyright, artists would not create anything. But artistic work existed before copyright was created in law in 1710. Ergo, protection of 7 years would seem more than generous when, for example, builders are not paid every time somebody enters their buildings, or lawyers are not paid every time somebody reads the contracts they wrote.

Well if I can get your art for free after a few years of waiting why would I ever pay? Shortening copyright so much has secondary effects.

By secondary effects, do you mean artists would cease to create art? If so, then artists living in the many hundreds of years before copyright existed in law would disagree. Or do you mean there isn't enough music, or film or literature, etc. in the world? Spotify doesn't have an input problem as far as I know.

No the secondary effects would be people no longer having to pay for art. Including corporations like Spotify and Netflix.

Artists would still make art but would have to either have patronage or find an alternative income source to make a living.

Easy fix: corporations can't hold IP. Only people can.

There. Fix't.