You seem to talk about fairness. Copyright law isn't supposed to be fair, it's supposed to benefit society. On one side you have the interest of the public to make use of already created work. On the other side is the financial incentive to create such work in the first place.

So the question to ask is whether the artist would have created the work and published it, even knowing that it isn't an insurance to their family in case of their early death.

I don’t know how much time you’ve spent on task scheduling or public strategy, but minmaxing of The Public Good versus the private benefit of art is, in fact, a question of fairness. It’s a compromise to give both parties as much of what they want or need as possible.