Overlong copyright protection stifles the creativity and saps the time of artists  In some instances, when artists achieve success they face the enervating impulse that their achievement brings. They become satisfied and complacent with what they have, robbing them of their demiurgic drive. Worse, and more frequently, successful artists become embroiled in defending their work from pirates, downloaders, and other denizens of the internet. The result is artists wasting time in court, fighting lawsuits that sap them of time to actually focus on creating new works. Artists should be incentivized to look forward, not spend their time clinging to what they have already made. Obviously, they have a right to profit from their work to an extent, which is why a certain, reduced length of copyright is still important. But clearly the current length is far too great as artists retain their copyright until their death and many years after. Moreover once the artist has died it is difficult to see how copyright can be considered to be enhancing or even rewarding creativity; it simply becomes a negative weight on others creativity.