I'd even go one step further, and make it a progressive tax proportional to the duration the work has been copyrighted. Initial grace period of a few years is free, then a very modest rate, but after a couple of decades it starts to ramp up really high. If it's that valuable, you can keep paying it off the profits as long as you want.
Same thing with estates. Inheriting a copyright? Fine - but there's a tax on that (with the usual applicable caps etc).
And said tax receipts could be specifically allocated to, say, fund libraries, free public Internet, and other forms of storing and distributing information and works of art for the benefit of all.
Also the way the current copyright system works means those free software licenses are already "dead" by your definition. It's just through pure chance that the duration keeps getting extended retroactively. The only difference between the current system and the proposed system is in the duration and the fact that in the old system all works had effectively the same duration again through pure chance because it's based on the lifetime of the author.
14 years seems plenty enough that its really shouldn't have any real impact on copyleft. Bugs, security patches, and plain reality changes makes 14 year old software kind of unusable. Many applications that is 14 years old won't even start on modern system and hardware.
So, there's this benefit too!
However I don't think it would work in practice, for the same reason public domain suffers now which is corporate lobbying. Fit to purpose, well thought out laws do not survive it.
It's the collective maturity of people that has to change. When the powerful elite is able to value culture more than their personal agenda, we could see some change. But that is a distant future if at all.
Company has an asset whose value increases, that needs to be booked and eventually declared as income AFAIK. I'm really not a good accountant when it comes to IP but I think that's the general idea.
I agree completely. This would go a long way towards bringing old works into the public domain, by making sure the artificial privilege of exclusive control requires active interest to maintain.
Ideally, I'd suggest making the fee scale exponentially (or at least non-linearly) with age, as well. That would lead people to ask questions like "is this decades-old work really worth millions to renew again, or should we make something new with that same money that'd reset the fee schedule?".
" But it's crazy that 100 year old scientific works can still be under copyright and illegal to distribute. These objectively have value to society, and the argument for the existence of the public domain is much stronger.
And why on Earth should copyright last last so long to begin with? How many works are worth anything after 10 or 15 years?"
The nature of capitalism means that because there's value to those scientific works, someone will try to extract wealth from them. That's why this happens across the board.
Regardless, I see what you're saying about OP contradicting his/herself, but it's not necessarily a contradiction: the value to society may be greater than that to the copyright holder. Of the millions of works still under copyright today created in 1960, only a handful are still generating wealth for their copyright holders. But could all those works which are not generating wealth actually be valuable to modern people breathing life into old works by republishing or remixing? Perhaps.
Imagine all the fun stuff all people would be able to do with the Disney characters if they came out of copyright. Disney could then make new things to define themselves.
Most of our entertainment industry just latches on to the old, giving us endless remakes and sequels instead of trying to find new writers and artists that give us things that are not cliche, inspiring and new.
I don't think derivative works should be protected personally. Is the world really better off with only George Lucas being able to make Star Wars movies? The fans would say no, I imagine.
Creators should be protected from pirates. Movies require a ton of money to make, and copyright protects their investment. And gives an economic incentive to create new works. Protecting derivative works doesn't really increase incentives for new works much. But it heavily restricts what others can create on it.
That said, it would be trademarkable. So you wouldn't be able to call it "Star Wars", or advertise it as canon. Or put the famous logo on it.
I read once that ancient Greek plays had lots of crossover and common characters that everyone knew. I think an alternative world without derivative work protection would be pretty interesting. Some of the best works I've ever read were fan fiction. They are technically illegal, and can never be put to print.
That's why it shouldn't be considered plagiarism for the author or someone eles to republish those works at freer pastures.
But who are we kidding, many journals refuse to publish validation of existing studies, which is the basis of empirical science.
They refuse to do science properly and we are worried about them not giving access to information.
Copyright law is ridiculous. Nonfiction and scientific work should be treated differently than fictional works. I don't really care if Mickey Mouse goes into the public domain. But it's crazy that 100 year old scientific works can still be under copyright and illegal to distribute. These objectively have value to society, and the argument for the existence of the public domain is much stronger.
And why on Earth should copyright last last so long to begin with? How many works are worth anything after 10 or 15 years? I believe 99% of all works make 99%+ of their revenue in the first few years. Having copyright last a lifetime, let alone much longer, is just crazy. Creators benefit exponentially less for every additional year of protection. And only the very successful ones even benefit to begin with - the vast vast majority of works are just forgotten by that time.
Put a cost on renewing copyright. This is actually how it used to be. Half way through, you could pay a fee to have copyright extended. Very few people paid this fee (because most works aren't economically valuable), so most works went into public domain much sooner. Journals charge $30 to access obscure ancient papers. But I bet they wouldn't pay even $30 to keep the rights to those same papers.
Don't put everything into copyright by default. And again especially works of nonfiction or scientific papers. If the authors want that, then sure. This wouldn't fix the issues with big journals that demand it. But it still seems like a sensible idea to have copyright opt-in, not opt-out.