I'm not entirely against long-term copyrights, but I'm not for them either. If a company/individual still rakes an exorbitant cashflow from a given copyrighted work, why not let them keep it? Let's make the law smarter. Initial copyright is free (14 yrs); first renewal is free (+4 yrs); subsequent renewals (every four years) increase in cost exponentionally (e.g., $2^n where n is the number of renewals): if a work is still profitable after 20 years, why not extend it another four? However, for a work to be profitable under these extension guidelines after sixty or eighty years it would have to be a monumental work indeed. This also allows less profitable works to fall into the public domain more quickly.
The other issue with our current copyright law is lost works: works where the rightsholder can no longer be found or even identified. This should be changed vis a vis copyright registration - register a work and after the copyright expires it is published freely online in a digital fashion.
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I'm not entirely against long-term copyrights, but I'm not for them either. If a company/individual still rakes an exorbitant cashflow from a given copyrighted work, why not let them keep it? Let's make the law smarter. Initial copyright is free (14 yrs); first renewal is free (+4 yrs); subsequent renewals (every four years) increase in cost exponentionally (e.g., $2^n where n is the number of renewals): if a work is still profitable after 20 years, why not extend it another four? However, for a work to be profitable under these extension guidelines after sixty or eighty years it would have to be a monumental work indeed. This also allows less profitable works to fall into the public domain more quickly.
The other issue with our current copyright law is lost works: works where the rightsholder can no longer be found or even identified. This should be changed vis a vis copyright registration - register a work and after the copyright expires it is published freely online in a digital fashion.