Performers of classical music have been shamelessly sued for copyright by music publishers.   Get hold of a cantata by Bach, or an oratorio by Handel, and switch a few crotchets and quavers around;  then announce a definitive new "Edition".   Anyone who wants to perform this edition has to buy a score for every member of the orchestra, every member of the choir and every soloist.    Bear in mind that the last edition of the same work went out of print in 1882, if not 1782.    Handel and Bach have been dead since before the American Declaration of Independence, but fiddling with the score enables publishers to claim royalties from music which they never originally published.   Many performances of Bach and Handel (and others) in recent years have employed very small numbers of performers.   I wonder why.

The mentality that allows a publisher to claim ownership of a work by a deceased artist, by doing no more than editing it, is the same as the one that says ownership of an image becomes void, if the living creator is insufficiently vociferous in defence of his/her rights.