I haven't read all comments yet, but some commenters seem to make the presumption that copyright is about artists. It is not. It is about the rightsholder which may in- or exclude artists. I'm writing this on my commute so I don't have the research to back it up at the moment, but I remember research has been done on the rightsholders and if I remember correctly only a small percentage were creators and thus actively contributed to culture. The larger percentage of the rightsholders were merely parasiting on ip rights created by creators already dead or who (had to) sold their ip-rights off for a meager sum. Copyright is therefor also less about incentive since it mostly benefits those holding on the 'old' creations and milking it instead of creating new works. I recommend reading the essays of Dutch professor Joost Smiers. He makes some interesting (and some wacky) points and is an interesting read.