In my view duration is not the problem, but copyright itself is. Nobody should expect to be "passively" paid for a job/effort made at a past point in time. You work 40 hours this week, you get paid 40 hours at whatever your rate.

Authors should use other ways to charge for their 40/80 hours work, and when released it should be in the public domain.

Scientists have learned to do it (by getting tenured or postdocs), im sure other can do it.

What about something you've made for fun but haven't made any money from? Should someone else be allowed to sell and profit from your work?

I'm not expecting to be "passively paid" for my hobbies. But I'm expecting that someone won't steal and profit from the things I make. Why would that be fair?

Say my hobby is statue making. I design and create a concrete statue that I failed to sell. Whether that be because I did not try or because I could not find a buyer, I could not sell it.

So I took it, and I put it in my pile of completed works: a pile of crumbling statute rubble by the roadside. In the digital case, maybe it was posted online and the pile is a timeline or portfolio.

Someone in a pick up truck drives by sees it, takes it, and sells it for half $1 million to a trust fund baby.

Was the output of my work and therefore the half $1 million stolen from me?

If there was nothing physical to take, and I had never tried to or successfully sold it to anyone and somebody else does it, was I stolen from or did I just fail to sell?

And then if I get my knickers in a twist over that sale I have to ask myself: is my hobby to be a sales person and to sell art or is my hobby to be an artist and make art?

I don't think I'm really following your analogy. Did I put it out on the side of the road because I didn't want it anymore, or did that person steal it off my property?

From what I can tell, the million dollars does not belong to me, but the person who stole my statue should be held accountable for stealing it, and they should be held accountable for selling an object that did not belong to them. Both of those things should be illegal.

Your analogy seems besides the point, though. In my original question, I specifically mentioned that the art piece was made for fun. Sometimes, as an artist, I make things just for fun, with no intention to ever sell them. Other people should not be able to take the things I make and sell them without my permission, or without some sort of deal beind struck between me and the seller. A society where it's legal to take another artist's work and sell it without their permission would be supremely unfair. A society for vultures.

For a concrete statue there sure are suspicious large amounts of straw peeking through

Are you high or a paid shill?

Unironically, let’s get rid of patent laws while we’re at it.

The advancement of technology would take off if we did not have patent trolls telling us what you could, and could not use understand and improve.

Just imagine what Palworld could be if it didn’t have to spend the last year two years, however long spending all of their budget fighting a patent case against the biggest fucking gaming company in the world instead of paying their developers to add new features and pals.

Imagine what crazy awesome intense games could be made with the nemesis system.

The patent is the coward‘s bargain.

Palworld ripped off another company's hard work. The IP holders poured insane amounts of time and money to market and make their work a success story. Now comes a bunch of snotty kids and try to make money off it. Nah, go fuck off. Use your head and come up with something original.

AI already gives IQ to the braindead masses. And now people want to abolish copyright, so the totally unworthy, useless nobodies could leech other's hard work and profit from it. Get a grip.

Maybe do not make games if you have zero ideas yourself. Go and mow the lawn if that's all you are capable of.

May you ever be the defendant of a patent troll's lawsuit on tech you believed was original.