Right. Copyright is supposed to be for the good of the population. In order to encourage people to create things, they're given a short monopoly on it after which it enters the public domain. The original copyright term was 14 years, I think.

The new setup is absurd. The public doesn't benefit for more than a century, at which point the copyrighted item is probably of next to no value.

And, like you said, the artist rarely benefits. Writers are probably the ones who come the closest to benefitting. They only have to pay their agent a cut, their publisher, then, finally Amazon. With advances, etc. you have to wonder how much they get paid for each additional book sold. Musicians basically don't make anything anymore, with the bullshit that Spotify (partially owned by the record companies) does. And then movies, TV, and other video stuff, the amount that creators get is massively watered down, and that's after the "Hollywood accounting" makes profits from even successful things disappear.

I really don't respect copyright anymore because it doesn't benefit me (a member of the public) nor does it benefit the artist. It's just a tool to hand money to certain entertainment conglomerates.