I believe that copyright is not a natural property right. You cannot own what someone else has in their head. Once you express music, it will be beyond your control and can be a source of inspiration and enjoyments for others. The only thing that prevents people from just making copies of the same work is the law itself. With digitalised music, it's literally just bits that make up a work. Compare this to a painting, you can make a copy of a painting, but it will never be the original work. You can hold on to a painting forever, just as you can hold on to a vinyl, but you can never control the music itself.
To some extent that is reasonable, to protect and nurture the artistry, but for works that were made in the 60s, there should be no one who owns the rights anymore, especially with something as culturally important as Beatles' songs. Copyright nowadays extends to 70 years after death of the artist. This is beyond ludicrous and does not promote the artistry as such. In fact, copyright is doing a disserve at this point when it prevents people from getting access to music that society at large benefitted from, especially considering that a lot of wealth has been generated for the artists already.
Did you know that you can download lots of ebooks at Apple iBooks that are now in the public domain? Important books of science and philosophy and lots of classic fiction. I really like the concept of public domain and it is so underused in digital media. Think of all the media that you will never see again, because copyright owners do not make it available. Should society not a have right to those works after a while?
