while disfavouring those who have yet to create

that should of course be :

while disfavouring those who have yet to create

This is simply another example of how copyright tends to protect creators who have already created while disfavouring those who have already created (see also documentary creators and the appropriation art people).

It’s no coincidence that the people pushing hardest for longer terms and more exclusive rights are those that already hold lots of copyrights rather than those who are trying to decide whether to create a work.

The question to me is not so much about administration of the rights but why one creator should be preferred over the other. I suspect, consistent with Tim’s administrative point, that the creators of the original works would have gone ahead with their creations despite the risk of a new work coming into existence thanks to small samples of theirs. (Indeed, the risk is not always of harm, but, sometimes, of being popularized by the later work.) It seems to me that the “conflict” is created by copyright law’s (and copyright practice’s) hostility to sampling, not anything intrinsic to the interests of the creators as creators.

The question to me is not so much about administration of the rights but why one creator should be preferred over the other. I suspect, consistent with Tim’s administrative point, that the creators of the original works would have gone ahead with their creations despite the risk of a new work coming into existence thanks to small samples of theirs. (Indeed, the risk is not always of harm, but, sometimes, of being popularized by the later work.) It seems to me that the “conflict” is created by copyright law’s (and copyright practice’s) hostility to sampling, not anything intrinsic to the interests of the creators as creators.