I am constantly appalled at the way copyright and anti-piracy legislation gets framed (not just in the US) to serve the needs of large intellectual property corporations rather than creators and innovators.

There is a need for copyrights. Businesses need copyrights so they can secure their ability to recoup investments and profit fairly.

But morally, the extended copyright protections have been founded on the need to reward and encourage creative individuals. Those people who through their genius create useful, popular and life-enriching products, and who need to be rewarded in a fashion that enables them to continue to create and develop new things. Because these people create jobs for sometimes a handful, sometimes millions of people.

Yet while these people get used as examples every time pleas are made for copyright extensions, corporations lobby for and "help" write legislation that either disregards or undermines creative individuals.

Ironically, there are cases (such as the Popeye copyright) where the US, due to its corporate bias, grants work-for-hire product a longer copyright than creator owned work. (Segar's Popeye is Public Domain in Europe, under copyright in the US until 2025 (with the last entering PD in 2034). )

One would think that if the laws were written to encourage creative individuals, creator owned work would enjoy lengthier extensions than work-for-hire products.

Not to mention the "Orphan Works" legislation that was designed so broadly as to make anything but corporately owned copyrights virtually impossible to protect.

Politicians need to start taking the views and concerns of creators into account when writing copyright and anti-piracy legislation.

Knut, I don't follow your logic.  Copyright is as much an incentive for works created under work for hire as it is for creator owned works.  A creator under work for hire is incentivized by his employment, which is incentivized by the ability of the company to secure a copyright

"Knut, I don't follow your logic.  Copyright is as much an incentive for works created under work for hire as it is for creator owned works. "

It is not, however, an incentive aimed at the creator of the work. It is not an incentive to new creation. It is an incentive to continued and highly protective production of the already created product, to the point that one might actually seek to outcompete new, improved products.

Of course everyone wants to own something valuable for all time. That is not in dispute.

However, copyright for a specific creation is weighed against the need for innovation and the creation of new works that can be beneficial in their fields. Sometimes that innovation incorporates elements or ideas used before. After a certain point, a copyright can impede the creation of new, possibly superior things.

This is in part why patents for drugs etc. have a far shorter expiry date than copyrights for books.

Work-for-hire creations are of course due protections. However, the incentive for creators under work-for-hire is primarily the paycheck, rarely residuals or later payments based on sales, unless those are offset by less money paif up front. It is a one off thing. If it takes them a year to create something and another 4 to clear a profit sufficient to justify the investment in the first place, then a copyright extended beyond 5 years is not an incentive to the creator. It is an incentive for the company to continue making copies of the old product.

It is profit to the corporation, yes. Which allows them to do further things. Not all of them innovative. However, with creator owned properties, the creator is incentivized further by all new profit.

I am not suggesting that work-for-hire creations should necessarily be less protected than creator owned properties. I do, however, consider it ass backwards that they receive greater protections.