Society is simply revisiting a conversation about doctored photographs, videos, and audio recordings.
The last word on this subject was not written in the 1920s, it's good to revisit old assumptions every century or so, when new forms of media and media manipulation become developed.
The first pass on it is unlikely to be the best, or even the last one.
This is a very inaccurate depiction of copyright. It originally only lasted around 20 years with the option to double it. Then it was reformed over and over across history to create the monster we have today.
Copyright has been revised, overhauled and redefined multiple times over the past few centuries. You couldn't have picked a worse example.
Here's an obvious question that came up (and was resolved differently in different jurisdictions) - can photographs be copyrighted? What about photographs made in public? Of a market street? Of the Eifel tower? Of street art? Can an artist forbid photography of their art? An actor of their performance? A celebrity of their likeness? A private individual of their face? Does the purpose for which the photograph will be used matter?
At what point does a photograph have sufficient creative input to be copyrightable? Is pressing a button on a camera creative input? What about a machine that presses that button? Only humans can create copyrightable works under most jurisdictions. Is arranging the scene to be photographed a creative input? Can I arrange a scene just like yours and take a photo of it? Am I violating your copyright by doing it?
There's tens of thousands of pages of law and legal precedent that answer that question. As a conversation, it went on for decades, with no simple first-version solution sticking.
