Well they do expire after 2 decades, which is a lot better than 70+ years for copyrights.

Still effectively an eternity in the modern world.

Only in the move-fast-and-break-things part of the world. In other engineering professions (aviation, drilling, pharmacy) it can take a decade to go from initial design to fully-deployed product.

Of course, but this is a discussion about music and not petroleum engineering, right?

No this is a discussion between the 2 decades for patents, which seems fair, versus the 7 decades for copyrighted material, which doesn't :)

IMO the patent term should depend on the field.

As far as copyrighted content stuff... I think a year or two is enough. Especially for movies and music which, afaik, make most of their money right after release. This would disincentivize most of the blatant copyright abuse happening today, while still allowing the creators to earn their money.

Big companies like to push for restrictions and subsidies using this very argument - oh the poor lone inventor, they can't survive if we don't create this overly restrictive law or subsidy. In practice, huge cartels benefit from these at the expense of small inventors and everybody else.

As a lone inventor you can spend your energy on building a company, or on enforcing your patents. getting bogged down in the courts won't make you money, building a company might.

I think the "lone inventor" myth died out in the last century.

The LPF (League for Programming Freedom) saw all of this corporate nonsense coming in 1990: portfolio warfare among giants; trolling and extorting; patenting trivial things and then trolling; and to your point, the death of the heroic lone inventor without a large team of patent lawyers to earn the money.

The LPF is gone now, software patents are the domain of large corporations, and garage guy is (largely?) no more.