Have you failed to notice that the loudest advocates of effectively perpetual copyright and draconian punishments for “piracy” of copyrighted material are not authors, artists or programmers, but the rent-seeking “elites” in the publishing, recording, and movie industries?
The Founders knew what they were doing when they wrote that clause in the Constitution: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
They had in mind the Law of Queen Anne, which in Great Britain not only limited the term of copyrights, but limited them to authors — before that publishers could secure royal monopolies on the printing of certain material — and the Law on Monopolies of 1662, which limited the granting of letters patent to inventors.
It says nothing of Congress having the power to secure those rights to publishers, literary estates, or anyone other than authors and inventors. As a strict constructionist, I would argue that the current state of copyright law (and to a lesser extent patent law) are a violation of the Constitution. Alas, our courts have been suborned by commercial interests to read that clause as creating monopoly rights that can be transferred from the author or inventor, monopoly rights which large “elite” moneyed interests jealously guard against the “sheeple”.
Your argument is not an argument for perpetual copyright, but for inalienable copyright, that cannot be transferred to an person (whether natural or juridical) as is now commmonly done as a condition for publication so that the monopoly rights inhere not in the author, but, and in pre-Queen-Anne Britain, in the publisher (usually an “elite” interest), only used to grant permission to publish under terms agreeable to the author
No laws <-———— Good laws, upheld by courts -————> Draconian Laws Favoring the Elites