The copyright laws are quite different from country to country. Here a design is protected 75 years *after* the originator has died, so there are actually some heirs that did exactly *nothing* and can milk the cow three generations further. So the current product policy is sometimes in opposition to the intentions of the originators. Like the heirs of Berthold Brecht, who hide every work of him and only allow any publication or performance of the works for juicy amounts of cash. That is the law but I gues BB turns around in his grave. Or 'designer furniture'. There are designs form the 50s that have been intended and designed to be cheap yet aesthetic and functional mass produced furniture for everybody. But the copyright holders sell them as 'designer furniture' for prices that no ordinary mortal can afford. Price is actually sometimes also part of the design. At least acoording to the will of the designers maybe not the profeteers of the laws.
Just wanted to say that it is indeed a difficult topic.
Witty
Coming to that, copyright is another scam, given the number of artists in every field who’ve inadvertently signed away or otherwise been swindled out of their own right to their own work. It’s the steal-it-fair-and-square principle, and the entertainment industry is rife with it, it’s core to the American way of business. Getting rich off someone else’s labor is who we are. Exhibit A, Alice Walton, left 22 billion dollars by her dad - along with her brothers and sisters. How big is that?
If she invested ALL of it at three cents on the dollar, compounded annually, works out to nearly two million dollars a day...at a far lower rate than she actually gets for her money. Ann’s family is by itself perhaps the single greatest aggrate concentration in history. That gives them enormous power when the big money plays.
The Waltons. Who made this fortune by crushing rural and small-town businesses very deliberately, at the very beginning. Those smiling older “greeters” became a tradition because the shopkeepers they ran out of business NEEDED JOBS! THAT LOOKED BAD!
$1,806,239.73 per day. Because math.
Oops, wanted to say that it’s Disney primarily who’s driven the extension of copyright to what we have now.