I fully understand the authors argument and disagree almost across the board. He should just strike a licensing agreement like everyone else. It's not hard.
Yet, anyone reading your comment might be mislead to think that companies are very reasonable about this and there might even be something as easy as Amazon.com to get licenses from. Not the case as it wouldn't make enough for the greedy and powerful as author said. If they want these rights, I think some equally-strong responsibilities are in order in exchange.
Getting licenses from large companies isn't that hard either. Are you gonna make a bunch of money? Turns out big corporations love money. So if you're gonna make a bunch of money just contact their licensing department. It's available on their public website.
Most people fail at most things they try. Most businesses fail. Most ideas suck. Most personal projects never see the light of day. And because some people can't bothered to send a damn e-mail you propose... ?
In my wedding video example, it was so hard to get them on the phone and get the two licenses that some companies briefly specialized in doing just that part for people. Fee was typically around $10,000. Far cry from my teacher in middle school contacting Cinderella copyright holder and paying a quarter or so royalty to allow us to do a Cinderella play.
So, if we're giving them control, I say there should be a requirement to make it easy to get a license from them.
Actually it is greedy for one man doing one thing to legally control that thing and charge whatever he wants for 100+ years. The things many workers create are much more valuable with little to no legal protection and far from guaranteed pay. So, there's should be a strong benefit to the public over no copyright if we're going to give the owner this much special treatment, power, and money.
For most content, I'm not seeing much of a difference between the one's that do it for pay vs those that do it for fun. Only seems to factor in when the development or production cost is high enough where one needs to recover it. Complex software, video games, and SFX movies come to mind.
Even then, the protections could be weakened after the return on investment came. Instead, we're seeing a lot of great stuff pulled off the market or still charged full price to force you to buy the next thing. That benefits only owners with provable harm to the public, esp with legacy software. The opposite of what system claims to provide. So, it's worth remembering that there's first part of getting authors paid and second part of what happens after. Both are corrupt in current scheme.
Which is particularly egregious given that Disney never owned the rights to Happy Birthday at any point in time! (you're thinking of Warner Music)