I'd expect most people in this forum have made something "worth protecting" or even make a living doing so. Certainly it's been my career. I still think we should drastically shorten copyrights and expect more to grant it. e.g. for software, require source escrow to the copyright office and probably require source availability to purchasers, and ban things like hardware that only runs signed software. Basically the law should be GPL without redistribution, but where you could hire a programmer to fix things for you and maybe share your diff. Or just straight GPL (i.e. software should not be eligible for copyright as it's a functional thing, not a creative thing, and consumer protection law should make it mandatory to provide source and a way to load your own version for any device that has it). For other works, registration fees should cover storage of a master copy until expiration + N years so it can be released to the public. Maybe "source material" there as well wherever it makes sense. I understand that might make my career less lucrative. That's fine.