One argument that’s commonly made by the entertainment industry is that copyright protection is what insures that works get distributed. That’s how they justify bribing Congressmen to keep extending the copyright term into infinity. Using a quick IMDB search, Jason Schultz discovered that 93% of the movies released from 1927-1946 are currently unavailable. I’d expect that numbers are similar for music and publications distributed at that time. Because we can expect that the extension of copyright terms will never stop, it means that the vast majority of works produced in the 20th century will never enter the public domain, and thus will not be available in any form. These extensions don’t serve anyone but the cabal of huge media companies that have a few valuable assets that they want to protect. How is the deceased author whose books are out of print served by the almost absolute unavailability of his works?