Well said. It wasn't even about the artists, per se, but about the art itself. I'm not sure even two years are needed; try zero, perhaps. Modern Internet-based distribution methods mean that you can open source something and it will become widely distributed or not on a meritocratic basis, with the costs of reproduction and distribution also being distributed. So one use for copyright, to get investment in the publishing and distribution infrastructure, is kaput. The other also seems to be, given that "copylefted" works are proliferating in many domains. It seems there's no shortage of creative output even from those who cannot expect to be remunerated by licensing exclusive rights; they either get their money in other ways that copyright isn't needed for, or they don't care about the money, on an individual basis.

"Is two years a good length of time? For software code it might be too long. For movies it seems far too short. The original legislation that enacted the copyright and patent clauses in the Constitution set a duration of 14 years."

For movies it sounds about right to capture most of the revenue through traditional means but get it into the public domain quickly. About half the money a movie will ever make tends to be made in the first few weeks, in theatres. Most of the rest is made in the first year after the DVD release, generally half a year to one year after the theatrical release. As long as the clock starts ticking when the work is first published, and not when production merely starts, two years seems adequate. The few movies that are perennial moneymakers are just lining the pockets of fat cats, having long since paid the rank-and-file grunts that did most of the work on them their final dimes. Trimming some of the fat there would be a good thing. cough*Disney*cough

"Patents work fairly well for the pharmaceutical industry."

But not for someone with, say, HIV disease, unless they're in Canada or western Europe. Otherwise, either controlling the disease will bankrupt them and wipe out their savings and pensions (United States, many other developed and developing countries) or the disease will simply kill them (most developing countries).

Laws are supposed to be enacted for the public good, not the good of a few latter-day robber-barons. The public good is not served by laws that result in lifesaving medicines being priced out of reach of most of the public that need them, while the rest pay through the nose to line the pockets of, mostly, executives -- half of them working on Madison Avenue* -- rather than actual lab workers and doctors and other medical experts and cure-finders.

*Have you noticed how much the pharmaceutical industry advertises? On TV -- including überexpensive Superbowl ads -- and in print, not to mention wining, dining, flying, and cruise-shipping doctors (check out a thriller by Robin Cook named Mindbend; most of the events are fictional, but the way doctors are wooed by big pharma is depicted realistically, short of being brainwashed while on those cruises that is). The amount of money they spend on advertising is obscene. I would argue that drugs be divided into two categories -- elective and necessary, with any lifesaving drug and any needed to enable someone to function (more) normally after an illness or injury being counted among the latter -- and that laws be passed requiring pharmaceutical companies to do only one type or the other, and be wholly divested of any financial interests that cross that divide. Then the ones that make necessary drugs can be banned from any kind of advertising except for publishing results in accredited medical journals. Doctors continuing-educate themselves from said journals, and so will know the facts -- and just the peer-review-filtered facts -- about what's available in the way of options to treat what. Useless or outright dangerous medications will simply never get used; the necessary role of advertising in letting people know of the existence of a product that does X gets fulfilled; and the obscene spending and reckless encouragement of the public to self-prescribe potentially dangerous medications goes away. Recreational substances of course continue to be advertised and sold as usual. The divide also makes it clear what should be insurance-claimable and what not.