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I think this is the correct thing to do as far as copyright law goes, but it seems to me that copyright terms are far too long to fulfill their original purpose: incentivize the distribution of creative works. Originally copyright was for relatively short terms (20 years IIRC). It is now life of the author + 70 years or 95 years from publication if the copyright holder is a corporation. Some organizations advocate for perpetual copyright terms as well.

Given the extremely long terms now available there is little incentive to quickly extract value from the copyrighted work. Patents exist for the same reason and have been similarly coopted by their holders.

Edit: if copyright terms were shorter publishers would be incentivized to keep their games in print and to update them for newer media/platforms.

2 comments

There are so many ways that copyright duration could be adjusted to dramatically reduce the duration for out-of-print not-for-sale works while simultaneously allowing Disney to keep Mickey Mouse.

The fact that it's a single fixed duration that continues to be extended for just a minuscule fraction of works is ultimately the issue.

Why do we want disney to keep mickey though? Just make it a flat 10-15 years and never extend it.

Mickey Mouse is in the public domain now (the original one at least), but I agree with your argument.

I'm totally okay with Mickey Mouse being copyrighted again if we could find a system that allowed for abandoned works to be out of copyright. It would be a huge boon to human culture.

Honestly, I'd like to see something more along the lines of the copyright lasts the lifetime of the author unless it gets sold.

Once it gets sold it immediately starts a shot clock of exactly 20 years.

Though honestly anything would be better than what we have now.

Wouldn't that give an advantage to any copyright assigned to a company, or subsidiary thereof?

Or lead to lengthy licencing deals rather than outright sales?

The idea is solid, I suspect it just needs some tweaks to the language. "It's not a sale, it's a license", ironically reminds me of sovereign-citizen "I'm not driving, I'm travelling and don't need a license, Officer" BS.