

I would be happy to tell these extremely rich people so. I don’t see this as a problem. That’s how human creativity worked for centuries.
if they weren’t extremely rich would you still be okay with it? what if someone finds an obscure person’s world built universe from 7 years ago that got no traction, decided to make their own fanfiction within that universe and it got extremely popular? in that case the one who did all the world building gets nothing but the person who used the original world builder’s creation got everything. i only used examples like harry potter, game of thrones, and dune because they are the most popular world built universes i know about, but stealing another person’s world can come from worlds built from unknown people too.
I just don’t think that’s true and I don’t think there’s a reason to believe it’s true. Go look at fan fiction. There’s whole thriving, rich, communities of it. Fascinating ideas and remixes. Almost all of it violates copyright. But it’s creative and people love it. Some of those authors go on to write their own original work. Why would you want to kill all of that?
you don’t think that if people can just make fanfiction off other people’s universes that they would opt to do that more often than doing their own world building and making their own universe? world building is hard and requires talent and a lot of work, if that is already done for you of course less people are going to make original works and more people are going to piggyback off other peoples universes.
fan fiction is fine. just dont try to sell it when all the world building and characters came from someone else’s ideas. if they have talent i encourage them to go make their own original work. i don’t want to kill fanfiction, i just don’t want to pay people who are profiting off someone else’s ideas but not compensating them for it. make as much fanfiction as you want as long as you don’t try to profit off it until you make your own original ideas.
I really don’t think it “fucks over” the author. They got their art out there. They inspired people. They can still sell copies. I don’t think they are entitled to a lengthy copyright.
basically just harkens back to what i said back up there. what about an author that does great world building, their world never becomes popular or makes money, and then someone else 7 years later sees their world building and makes their own story within that world and makes all the money and fame from it while the original author gets nothing?
The scenario where someone gets fucked over, in my mind, is they write something original and a megacorp scoops it up without payment or attribution. That’s something a short copyright could protect. So when some nobody writes a cool story or song, Disney can’t use their massive budget to capitalize on it without paying the author anything. That’s why I would accept a short copyright.
i agree but i think copyright protects people from both megacorps and regular people who also can just scoop up someone else’s idea without payment too. also i don’t know if a 7 year copyright would even be long enough to stop megacorps even in your proposed scenario for protection.

steam machine actually sold well. it’s on a waitlist now because of volume of sales despite the high price. i know on reddit there was a big storm about the price, but in the general population people i talked to were really excited about buying a steam machine. a lot of it is more about buying a luxury item, like how people want the latest iphone always when they’re expensive and androids are better. valve has that brand name and loyalty.