I don't want to penalize the families of authors who die suddenly and award a windfall to corporations. 30 years is just fine, no need to discuss the author's death at all.

I think 15 years would be more than enough, certainly in most fields of copyrightable endeavor. Whether there are fields where that wouldn't be long enough, I'm not sure.

The copyright on the first Harry Potter book should have expired by now. Copyright expiration should not be merely a distant possibility that we rarely think about, as it is today.

The reason why +years exists is mostly for the case of inventors who die prematurely, so that their family can still reap the benefits. It's the same reason why widows can collect their partners' pensions.

No, that's not it. The reason is that Disney lobbied to have the copyright term extended to prevent Mickey Mouse entering the public domain. This is despite that Disney was essentially built on public domain works.

This isn't how copyright was meant to work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#S...

CGP Grey on copyright: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk862BbjWx4

It's interesting to me when others come up with similar conclusions independently.

There's studies of sales of works (books etc) and iirc, at least with books, the vast majority of sales are within the first several years, with income trailing after that. This has come up in discussions of zombie rights to works, where a publisher sits on something out of print without releasing new copies because the return isn't enough. It's like the textbook reason for limits on copyright terms. Last I looked at it, 30 years was more than sufficient to cover the bulk of sales in almost all cases. If you think back 30 years now, that would be works released pre 1980s and earlier. That makes intuitive sense to me.

My primary concern is all of the works that die because they're no longer commercially viable but are still locked away; I'm actually willing to make an exception for the rare blockbuster hits if it actually means everything else becomes available.

My thinking is author's life for unpublished works (to protect works-in-progress), 10 years after publication unconditionally, followed by a sequence of renewals that require some level of public availability to be granted.

Obviously, there's a lot of details to be worked out: What constitutes publication? How long is the initial unconditional period? How many renewals are allowed and how long is each? What are the actual requirements to get a renewal?