I'd suggest a short default copyright period with a renewal system for the works that do require a long copyright period like the infamous Mickey Mouse.
Why do Mickey mouse films require longer copyright; has Disney not recouped the costs of production?
The point of copyright is to get works into the public domain by allowing creators to recoup the costs of production and make a little bit of profit, the point is not to allow an endless revenue stream from something that is public domain.
If anything works that create more revenue should have their terms expire faster.
I support letting companies keep their copyrights on the grounds that it will be a lot easier to get this actually passed, and in the grand scheme of things, Steamboat Willie is not what we want. Steamboat Willie doesn't matter. What matters is the 99.995% of the rest of the stuff done in the same year that Steamboat Willie is shielding, the stuff with zombie owners, the stuff with owners that don't really care, the stuff that you simply have to presume is owned by somebody, somewhere, who may sue if you try to use it yet at the same time there is no practical way to find out who these people are so you could seek permission.
I also support continuously raising the price necessary to renew the copyright as you try to carry it longer and longer. And again, I'm not trying to hurt the mighty Disney corporation; sums they'd laugh at would still be sufficient to open the bulk of the content back up to us, and that's what I care about.
To make my point clear, this is entirely practical. In theory, should Steamboat Willie be public domain by now? Yeah, sure, there's no really good argument based on the public interest otherwise. But as a practical matter, if we could distinguish between Big Copyright's interests and the vastly larger "everything else", we'd be much more likely to come to a compromise that leaves everybody reasonably satisfied, if not ecstatic.
I don't want to speak for the OP but he's probably referring to the character Mickey Mouse, which is already protected effectively in perpetuity by trademark law. So there doesn't seem to be a reason to distinguish copyright terms on that account.
I'd ask if we need to extend copyright on Mickey Mouse films? What good does that do?
Now, extension of trademark, that I get to a limited degree. They can be the sole Mickey maker for a while. But why should they not have to make new material to generate new income from it?
There is a flip side to this: why should you have the ability to take the hard work of whomever came up with Mickey Mouse and take it in a direction that the creator doesn't like?
Say you wrote an open source software package in 2004. Should Microsoft be able to take your work and incorporate it into a proprietary package, just because 7 years passed?
Yes, because even the founders recognized that intellectual property is not real property. You can't stop people from copying ideas, and so they permitted copyright to be applied for a limited time in order to encourage people to release more creations (because they got rights to exploit them exclusively for a while), because the idea was that these creations entering the public domain would enrich the public domain for everyone. The fact that nothing is falling into the public domain (and probably never will again in our lifetimes if the status quo continues) is the biggest flaw in the current copyright system.
No, you don't get to own an idea forever just because you thought of it first. The very concept of 'owning ideas' is silly, but even if it wasn't, the second you tell it to someone else, it becomes part of the collective society and culture. If you don't like the deal that copyright gives you, you have a choice: don't share the idea at all. And that's fine, and I'm sure that the world would have kept spinning if nobody ever drew up MickeyMouse.
I don't think that's the flipside to my point. I think the flipside to your point would be "why have IP protection at all? It's an idea in my head now, why should someone else have control over that and my ability to execute it?"
And I don't actually program anymore, so let's go with writing: should anyone have the ability to republish it without my consent after the copyright has ended? Yes. Even a big publisher.
Should anyone have the ability to take my created work and extend on it, using my creations outside of the created work? Yes, after the trademark ends.
On the other hand, there is the problem of abandonware that is so old the owner don't actually enforces copyright on it anymore but technically it is still copyrighted.
I don't know if that's a "problem", it's just piracy. I think the abandonware scene is what film would look like with shorter copyright. Well, and non-traditional sequels and remakes may have actual budgets...
Well that depends on your flavor of open-source, doesn't it? Didn't Microsoft use some BSD code for their TCP/IP stack once? (I'm sure it's long been rewritten.)
