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You are implying that people are against writers profiting from their works. Maybe some of the more unapologetic 'pirates' are, but most people in this thread are just asking for a fair balance. By having a fixed term (I do think life of the author plus a bit is fair; life plus 50 is pushing it a little too far for my tastes; life plus 75 is imho unreasonable) the author gets to profit from their creations. But the author also has to acknowledge that they borrowed from those who came before and therefore that others in the future get to borrow from them in the same way. Baum go to borrow from the public domain to create The Wizard of Oz (he was not the first to write stories about little girl heroines, or fantastical worlds with flying creatures). So Baum's work goes into the public domain and Maguire borrows. And now the thank you that he gives those he borrowed from is that some say in the future (not right now, but someday, when the copyright expires after he is dead and gone) someone might borrow from him. Fair is fair. He did not create his work in a vacuum. But he did create it. So he gets protections for a fixed time, and then he compensates those who came before him by having his own work return to the pool of human culture from which others can later draw. I see nothing wrong with this.
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