The general public also get sold on the rosy idea that copyright (and patents to a certain extent), protect the little guy, that thanks to this mechanism their work will not be stolen by opportunistic freeloaders. It also resonates with the "one day I will strike rich" mentality.

What they usually "forget" to tell you is that your IP is absolutely worthless if you don't have the resources to defend it in court, which in turns actually advantages freeloaders who either have relatively low costs to sue (patent trolls are basically an example of this) or enough money that they don't feel the pain if they lose.

The current system basically incentivizes suing over IP NOT creating it.

To add to the list of things that they "forget" to tell you, is that the real origin of copyright is fundamentally tied to censorship as well [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright

Overall, IP seem to be a massive mistake.

Also: almost no works make any money at all after 5 years.

Copyright terms longer than a reasonable 5 years are only benefitting Disney and the other big copyright cartels.

They are not serving the purpose of copyright: To encourage creation.