Nevertheless, I consider your argument fundamentally flawed.
To begin I would like to draw your attention to the fact, often overlooked, that the granting of monopolies and other privileges is more typical of the early modern state which lacked many of the more efficient and sophisticated instruments that we have today.
No sane person would – I dare to say – consider abolishing state financed pharmaceutical research in favour of issuing monopolies to haphazard drug inventions, that would yield rewards more in proportion to popular demand instead of medical need.
If I understand you correctly you plead for the copyright term extension because this would mean somehow greater income for performing musicians later in life. This is in fact the case, but consider the following: the value at the time of the performance of these income is very small, because it will occur far in the future, and it is no so secure. I sum they would get some more tickets for a lottery to be drawn in a far off future. – Not the most brilliant or efficient way of achieving the worthy goal of bettering the lot of ageing musicians, I presume. If what you want is better social security, it is social security that you should demand. – Amusingly your argument is neo-contortionist, say like for commercial TV: you buy a box Persil and then better close your eyes.
On the other hand, your proposal comes with costs that you do not account for correctly, I'm afraid.
A monopoly will reduce output, I think most economists will concur here. in the case of scholarly journals, where the legislator has abolished or aborted open access, extortionist pricing resulted, limiting effective access perhaps even to lower levels than before those recent technological developments which would make it really cheap.
In order to have a flourishing download market, you would have to support Digital Rights Management, which is, however, an evil in its own right.
Consider a parallel development: Technology would permit to build an open archive of all radio emissions, only a tiny proportion of which have any commercial value, but which would constitute a great source of material for many purposes, nostalgic, or intellectual. This is dead because it would compete with archives of the newspapers etc., which therefore can offer their (less important) archives at higher price.
Best regards
[part of my manuscript is illegible – please, excuse any lacunae]
You're assuming - like most of the people who make bold assertions about copyright without knowing the first thing about how the music industry works - that all copyrights are held by giant major labels, and that's all there is to know.
They're not. The reality is that rights assignments are split between individuals, holding companies, other representatives, and major labels - among others. For a typical working musician, the micro-payments add up.
What's your alternative suggestion - that we should pay working musicians even less than they earn already and make them survive on a minimum state pension, because no one should give a crap about their time, effort and talent?
Is that supposed to be a progressive argument?
