What? I'd never thought I'd ever come to call you a corporate tool. He's rich because Disney and RKO manipulated copyright laws to the point of absurdity. And somehow managed to get the rest of the world to swallow their horseshit. Which is truly remarkable.
We've lost our compass completely regarding what is fair compensation to creators of copyright. Today it's bizarre what we waste our courts time with defending.
Who do you think should profit from a work of art?
And why do you care how much they profit if their profit is based on the free and uncoerced purchase of the art?
Because today's copyright law ignores human psychology. Copyright law rests on the Hegelian idea of the lone genius creating masterful works of art in a vacuum. Nietzsche had the same idea. Also Ayn Rand. That's not how art works, and not how art ever has worked. Artists, influence borrow and steal from eachother all the time. All art is collaborative. It's more helpful to see all of humanity as a single hive mind producing art collectively.
When a piece of art is created and is successful it quickly becomes part of our shared culture. It takes up space in our brains. Current copyright laws prohibit us from being allowed to use that, be inspired by it and create new art that we sell. It's nuts.
There has to be some sort of reasonableness. The fact that Bob Dylan makes more money today (for music he made in the 60'ies and 70'ies) than a top level scientist or even a politician is crazy. It's a system that has spun completely out of control.
I recommend reading up on the background to why we have copyright laws at all. Originally we didn't have copyright law. It was put into place so artists should have something, rather than nothing. It was to encourage more art to be produced. Early USA thought copyright was an infringement of free speech and were stubbornly against it. They saw it as pure evil. But noticed that Mark Twain therefore didn't publish anything in USA. He published all his work in England. So they begrudgingly accepted limitted copyrights.
I recommend reading this book, Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig. It's pro copyright. But gives a balanced view of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_(book)
I think a copyright of about 10 years after publication is fair.
There's another reason to change copyright laws. People follow incentives. Right now young people adore popstars rather than scientists and dream about being on stage. But we don't need more rock stars. What we really need is more scientists and engineers. So lets tweak the rules to get more healthy incentives for young people?
The current copyright rules are also wide open for abuse. Disney is a prime example. Constantly making cartoons of recently expired stories blocking anyone else from making films of them. Today its more lucrative to make hack art, hire a corporate lawyer, than to just focus on being creative. It's a fucked system