[dahart]

> Now, assuming that money is the only harm of copying, which is what I believe

This is exposing your assumptions, biases, and lack of complete understanding of copyright and the history of copyright. It doesn’t take long to find examples of reputational damage if you search it, nor is it hard to imagine some, so it seems clear you haven’t even tried.

Reputational damage that can affect a creator’s entire business includes, but is not limited to: someone distributing lower quality copies, leading to a reputation of low quality; someone distributing cheaper copies, leading to a reputation of being too expensive; many people distributing slightly changed works, leading to a reputation of stylistic abundance, non-exclusivity, or non-uniqueness. Plagiarism is different than copyright, but there absolutely is overlap, and making derivative works that contain large sizeable portions is a gray area where the derivative author can legally take credit and give the impression that they authored all of the work when they didn’t.

The rest of your comment is elaborating on your opinions without providing any of the justification I asked for. What makes you qualified to opine on how long it takes for a creator to make “enough money”? What makes you qualified to decide that a certain amount of monetary harm is “less important”? I don’t care how many years you think feels good to you; I’m asking for an evidence based demonstration that it’s the right number for society, or a strong argument for why that shouldn’t be the criteria. Neither of those is easy, but you haven’t even broached them.

[librexpr]

I did propose a solution to all these reputational damages you mentioned: requiring clearly labeling derivative works as derivative works. Someone selling something that looks like your work won't affect your reputation if they have to explicitly and clearly disclaim that the derivative work has nothing to do with you. We can make this requirement last significantly longer than copyright.

And someone selling copies cheaper might give you a reputation for being too expensive, but a) that's the money issue again, and b) this can only happen after 20-50 years, at which point you've had plenty of time to build your business, and c) even after 20-50 years, you only have a problem if you were completely stagnant, because any new changes you made to the work will last 20-50 years after the most recent change.

If you don't think that this solution is sufficient, then it would seem that we've found the main point of disagreement.

You also asked:

> What makes you qualified to opine on how long it takes for a creator to make “enough money”? What makes you qualified to decide that a certain amount of monetary harm is “less important”?

The way I answer these questions is by viewing money as a means to an end. I think money only matters insofar as it positively or negatively affects someone's life, so to me the question is, "to what extent is this person negatively impacted by less money 20-50 years later, compared to everyone who is negatively impacted by the restrictions on their actions?"

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As for the rest of my comment, I was elaborating on my opinions, yes. And yes, these opinions are largely based on what seems reasonable to me. I don't have the desire nor time to do a thorough study to find the actually correct number of years, and even if I did, the question is sufficiently complicated that I expect that there would still be a lot of uncertainty left even after thorough research. In addition, since it's partially a moral issue, gut feeling will always be a necessary component of this.

Finally, your original question wasn't about concrete numbers, merely persuasiveness:

> But, devil’s advocate, I haven’t heard a super convincing argument as to why something I make should ever revert to public domain, especially while I’m alive. Why shouldn’t I have the right to take my work to my grave and never have someone else profit from it?

So I don't feel bad about explaining my own point of view, which is persuasive to me even if not to you, as an attempt to answer that question.