Artists deserve to profit from their work and copyright provides just recompense  Artists generating ideas and using their effort to produce an intangible good, be it a new song, painting, film, etc. have a property right over those ideas and the products that arise from them. It is the effort to produce a real good, albeit an intangible one, that marks the difference between an idea in someone’s head that he or she does not act upon, and an artistic creation brought forth into the world. Developing new inventions, songs, and brands are all very intensive endeavours, taking time, energy, and often a considerable amount of financial investment, if only from earnings forgone in the time necessary to produce the work. Artists deserve as a matter of principle to benefit from the products of the effort of creation. [1] For this reason, robbing individuals of lifelong and transferable copyright is tantamount to stealing an actual physical product. Each is a real thing, even if one can be touched while the other is intangible in a physical sense. Copyright is the only real scheme that can provide the necessary protection for artists to allow them to enjoy the fruits of their very real labours.  [1] Greenberg, M. “Reason or Madness: A Defense of Copyright’s Growing Pains”. John Marshall Review of Intellectual Property Law. 2007,