What will enter the public domain in 2026?

They are a capitalist.

Artists create, despite the destitution, because they want to create and feel strongly compelled to create. Art is about that compulsion.

An artist wants enough money to pay rent/mortgage, raise a family, have a hobby, not be in debt, etc. But when Daniel Hardcastle received 0 pounds from his book because the publisher was a scammy cunt, he doesn't stop writing because there's no money in it, he continues to write despite the lack of profit. Because that's what he feels compelled to do.

When youtube made it impossible for animators to make money on Youtube, Arin Hanson (Egoraptor) started paying people to make animations out of his content, including people who started out doing it entirely without their permission. When many channels make pure profit from creating clip shows or compilations of their content, instead of throwing lawyers or the Youtube machine at those people, he paid someone to make official versions.

Compare how those two jackwads acted (the fine brothers), trying to trademark the concept of a "reaction video", to all the different channels and groups that do "Power Hour" or variety content like Good Mythical Morning. They even joke about how they are all stealing from each other. They know that their audience is looking for their unique output, not a specific format, and that protecting such a format would be a waste for everyone.

Because a real artist does not say "How dare you make better product with my formula", a real artist says "Aww man they used my formula to make something great, I should figure out how to make something great and up my game".

The sin in artistry is someone taking your style or content and shamelessly stealing it because it's a profitable business, rather than riffing on it or iterating on it.

Weird Al generally gets permission to do his work despite the law being clear that he does not have to because artistry is about respect and effort and collaboration.

More importantly for copyright law, despite no legal protection for a "Power hour" format, many groups are able to profit off it simultaneously, because art is not some winner takes all market. Copyright is not about enabling you to profit off of a work indefinitely, copyright is about ensuring that Greedy McBusinessman cannot take your book and sell it for cheaper because he doesn't have to pay your rent and does that for a hundred other artists. It's about who owns the Rights to Copy a work.

Because an accountant’s work is timely and transactional. Creative works may have lasting value for multiple customers.

As a contrasting example: pretty much all other income generating assets can be passed down.

Copyright is a compromise between society and authors, and I think that’s the right way to frame things.

(Also some countries have this same compromise for assets such as land, where land “ownership” is subject to time limits)

But others would point out that being able to not distribute a work is part of having the copyright. If a corporation doesn't want to sell old works because they want to encourage people to only buy new works then that's their right. The government saying that it's fair game simply because there's no legal option to purchase it is an infringement on their right to withhold the work from the public. They could even have a policy of destroying all copies of the work once it goes off sale to make sure it never enters the public domain, that's also within their rights.

If copyright is hard stopped after 14 (or even 28) years, it doesn't matter whether the initial rightsholder dies or hates the world or refuses to do the legwork to make it accessible, they cannot stop anyone from distributing it anymore full stop.

Abandonware is only a thing because of copyright.

>A copyright holder shouldn't have exclusive control over which media and stores sell their work.

This is the entire point of copyright. Abandonware is an intentional right of copyright. A creative SHOULD be able to say "Actually I don't want to sell this anymore"... at least until their rights run out after a decade or two. Copyright is NOT about giving third generation descendants of a creative profit from something that was made a century ago. Copyright is NOT about preventing people from playing around with intellectual property of an entire previous generation.

Disney's existence is basically because of a formerly correct and right implementation of copyright. If Disney's copyright existed when they first started, they would have likely failed to be big. Large copyright timescales only hurt artists and the public.