I say go simple on the copyright extension formula. If you treat it as a tax (scaling by revenue or similar), it gets messy, encourages dishonesty, and pretty much forces a new subindustry to spring up. But if you keep it simple, you can achieve much the same result without needing more staff in the tax or copyright offices, or inspiring the existence of copyright lawyers or accountants.

Ten years of free protection, then costing $10 × 1.5 ⁿ ⁻ ¹ for each subsequent year. Year 10 costs $0, year 20 about $380, year 30 about $22,000, year 40 about $1,300,000, year 50 almost $75,000,000—and few fifty-year-old things will be worth $75,000,000 per year and growing to retain copyright to. And I doubt any individual work would be worth the $4.25 billion of year 60 (10 × 1.5⁴⁹, incidentally just 1% short of 2³²), so that’s a rough absolute cap of 60 years.

You could scale the $10 base figure to inflation, or you could just schedule a review every decade or so, or you could even ignore inflation altogether, which would slowly extend average copyright terms (e.g. year N today would cost similar, indexed, to year N+1 20 years ago).

Concerning your registry, I don’t think you want to require a registry for the first ten years, but only for any extensions—and make it that if anyone can prove beyond reasonable doubt that you actually published the thing earlier than the date you claim when you register it, then your work is thrown into the public domain as punishment.

I like your general concept, but my concern with any fixed fee is that it pushes out small publishers in favor of big ones.

A small publisher who is making say $300,000 from their work after 40 years can't afford to register it, but Disney can easily afford the 50 year fee.

Also, the reason for registration right away is because otherwise you can't be sure a work is in the public domain or who to license it from for at least however long the no registration period is. If it's 10 years, then you have to wait at least 10 years to find out if someone has a claim on it.

I don’t see how it would favour people with money, as it should become simple economics: Disney can afford the $1,300,000 at year 40, but if they project that their revenue from the work will be $300,000 in that year, why would they renew the copyright? They would instead allow it to lapse, and probably get somewhat reduced revenue. Cash flow should be the only situation where people with money could be favoured, and copyright renewal loans would become a thing to smooth that out (though I wouldn’t expect them to ever be common).

Registration is a heavy burden that has caused all sorts of pain in the past, and although terms are unreasonable these days I do think that automatic copyright is reasonable. You’re not unsure for ten years, you know for ten years from publication that it’s copyrighted—so you contact whoever wrote it, if you can find them, or you wait and see if not (which would be the case if it was registered anyway, since you can’t predict whether they’re going to renew the thing).

Actually, another argument against requiring registration: it strongly favours big publishers, who know the rules and are used to filling in the paperwork, and makes life harder for individuals, especially in the case of unexpected success (“I didn’t bother registering it because it’s been a waste of time every other time and I didn’t expect it to get popular”). After ten years, you’ll have a fairer idea whether your work is of meaningful commercial value, for which the answer is normally “no”.

I think jedberg's point is that revenue generated is not being factored in.

So Disney, who effectively has a monopoly on certain popular content can copyright it for a long time because they're making so much money off of it, while a small time copyright owner who is making $10k a year will not be able to make money for very long.

I'm not so sure that's a bad thing. Depriving the public of free use should be compensated appropriately. The older it is the more it becomes part of our shared culture.

It makes sense that in some cases large players will be capable of realizing benefits from things at scales that small ones simply can't match. A small player could still presumably sell their copyright to a large one if it appeared lucrative to continue extending it.

It's a matter of balancing freedoms against monopolies in order to maximize innovation. Large players often enjoy intrinsic economic advantages and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing as long as it doesn't hurt consumers.

>It's a matter of balancing freedoms against monopolies in order to maximize innovation. Large players often enjoy intrinsic economic advantages and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing as long as it doesn't hurt consumers.

I wonder what other n-order consequences of this might be. The suggested approach will encourage small players to either focus on original content or compete with each other using public domain items. The big companies will buy or even rent out rights when original holders can't support the fee. This will happen around copyright fee increase breakpoints, the change of ownership will become more predictable, more pump and dump situations like with Star Wars happen to popular franchises. Predictable change of ownership will affect share prices, this will be in news all the time. If breakpoints will coincide with calendar years, the companies will try to maximize profits before the fee grows too much, resulting in super-competitive, choke full release schedules like what happens now around Christmas. We'll see weird variations of public domain content, like fan fiction, but on larger scale and more money for creators. Older, public domain content might see more demand thanks to derivative works it enables, and more demand means healthier content preservation efforts (more customers, more money to support the projects) and file sharing scene.

Moreover, Disney will just register its decade of works as a single multipart work, so this regime would encourage further monopolization

If that would be a vulnerability under my proposed scheme, it would already be a vulnerability now. But as it is, it’s already blocked by law surrounding copyright of compilations. Indeed, my scheme in my preferred form takes matters further so that if they tried to do what you suggest they’d be risking getting everything in the “single multipart work” declared public domain as soon as someone complains that some of those substantial “parts” were published long ago.

I generally like this, but think it can be bought for 5 years at a time. Yearly stuff is annoying for everyone. Agree copyright as written is maybe ok for a ten-ish year period. Maybe 5.

Could do roughly what most domain name registries do: you can renew for between one and ten years at a time. So if you wanted to pay for years 11–20 all at once, you’d just cough up your $1,133.30 in one go rather than paying it annually as $10, $15, $22.50, …, $384.43.

I honestly never thought I'd see someone citing the ICANN DNS system as an example of a good thing but in this case I agree, it fits.

It's an interesting point. Yearly is terrible for individuals but if you think about it for a tax such as this large blocks are just paying for the smaller pieces all at once. It probably doesn't make sense to offer discounts since the express purpose is to discourage holding the copyright in the first place.

> If you treat it as a tax (scaling by revenue or similar), it gets messy, encourages dishonesty, and pretty much forces a new subindustry to spring up.

Not if you treat it as a Harberger* tax. If you do that, the small-time writer gets to keep his characters for a pittance, but Disney pays royally for all their princesses.

* https://academic.oup.com/jla/article/9/1/51/3572441

I think the only time a Harberger tax makes sense is for illiquid investments, such as investment real estate. Everywhere else, the forced buying and selling creates more problems than it solves.

In this example of Disney's IP - it takes a lot of time and money to make a movie. A competitor to Disney could wait until they announce a new movie and then forcibly buy up enough rights to make the movie illegal to release. It encourages and creates a framework for sabotage among competitors.

The steady state is that one mega corp emerges victorious. Disney sets up a script that forcibly purchases any "super hero" adjacent IP. No small time creators would ever be allowed to exist, when large corporations are allowed to smother them so easily.

I also strongly disagree that this is the simpler option. Figuring out how to price your property and how often to re-asses would definitely bring about OP's concern of "gets messy, encourages dishonesty, and pretty much forces a new subindustry to spring up."

Pure Harberger taxes aren't a perfect fit for copyright--7 initial years free* is what one fan of the original paper proposed--but I can't see how, compared to existing copyright law, they encourage dishonesty, get messy, or require new industry (a sufficiently large IP company might shift some spending from lawyers to valuation and risk assessment).

> A competitor to Disney could wait until they announce a new movie and then forcibly buy up enough rights to make the movie illegal to release.

In a de novo work like Toy Story, or a fully licensed work like Wreck-It Ralph, Disney owns the rights and knows their value when they announce the upcoming film. The problem only occurs in cases like Lion King, where an existing folk story gets Disneyfied, with no compensation, and often no credit, to the cultural originator of the story.

I'm ok with Disney needing to pay extra money while their competitors pay extra taxes, in cases like this.

* https://ristret.com/s/ftmbkg/harberger_taxation_has_elegant

> but I can't see how, compared to existing copyright law, they encourage dishonesty, get messy, or require new industry.

The comparison was with OP's suggestion of replacing copyright with a simple tax, not with current copyright law. I agree Harberger taxes would be simpler than the existing system, though still not preferable.

> In a de novo work like Toy Story, or a fully licensed work like Wreck-It Ralph, Disney owns the rights and knows their value when they announce the upcoming film.

Sure, but a competitor could steal the rights out from under them in the time between announcing the film and the film hitting theaters.

There's another issue with not-yet-profitable IP. With Harberger taxes you wouldn't be able to protect IP while you're still working to build products around it. This is another way that smaller / new players get screwed with this type of system.

As I said, the forced buying / selling creates way more problems than it solves. All we are trying to do here is determine how high a tax should be. Inventing a scheme where people and companies can steal from each other (for a fee) is always going to have worse second order effects and be more complicated than just coming up with a price formula for the tax.

The “initial duration X free” I mentioned solves all these problems without producing very onerous complications. Even if it didn’t, a small creator could get immediate cash infusions simply by pricing his newly created characters at a large multiple of what he thinks he could make off them—that way, Disney’s buyout is a providential windfall instead of legal thievery.

I think you’re undercounting the benefits and overcounting the side effects of incentive compatible mechanisms!

> The “initial duration X free” I mentioned solves all these problems without producing very onerous complications.

I guess that depends on how you define it. All the marvel characters and stories have existed for decades. The only thing new about the movies are the movies themselves

> a small creator could get immediate cash infusions simply by pricing his newly created characters at a large multiple of what he thinks he could make off them—that way, Disney’s buyout is a providential windfall instead of legal thievery.

Yeah, and run the risk of bankrupting themselves from the tax bill in the process.

> We propose a remedy in the form of a tax on property, based on the value self-assessed by its owner at intervals, along with a requirement that the owner sell the property to any third party willing to pay a price equal to the self-assessed value.

I’m not convinced this would be a good fit for copyright in general, but it sounds very problematic for application to private persons in any field; in this case, your small-time writer would surely either overpay, or undervalue and have their work legally stolen from them by a Disney. Sounds like it’d favour the big entities that can play to the laws of averages.

But more generally, Harberger taxation seems a pretty cool concept, a genuine alternative to the current model of capitalism. I’m glad you mentioned it!

> or you could even ignore inflation altogether, which would slowly extend average copyright terms

Just what we need, a Disney incentivized to cause rampant inflation...

I originally thought of that in jest, but honestly putting money is more stable assets or other currencies and supporting and lobbying for inflationist policies would probably be in their best interest, and they're powerful enough that it probably wouldn't be a good thing.

I tried to avoid your absurd fee idea, but failed. So here goes...

A) which govt gets your fee?

B) does paying 1 govt cover you in all countries? Or just 1? What if different countries set different fee levels?

C) % of revenue? Not profit. Who's revenue? Creator? Manufacturer? Distributor? Portol? All 4? (think author, publisher, bookshop, amazon)

D) $100 per what? Per blog posting? Tweet? Novel? Song? If I write a song I should pay $100 per year to assert I wrote it? Forever? In one country or all of them?

E) assuming you don't think I should pay 200 different countries both annual fees and % of revenue - and assuming you're not happy to peg the price in Malawian kwacha - presumably it'll be cheaper in one country than another - so we should all register in Trinidad and Tobago where they only charge the equivalent of a dime?

I could go on, but let's leave all suggestions of fees out of it...

Fees are mostly to disincentivise keeping works from public domain (which copyright creators agreed was for the public good) which are not really benefiting the creator in any substantial way.

Regarding governments, just like we establish residency for income tax purposes, you could establish residency for copyrighted-work creation. If it's multiple countries you've been in while "creating", the one you spent most time in, or choose-one. If you register an off-shore tax-haven company today to receive your income while you reside (and work) in another country, when found out, you'll be charged with tax evasion. It's not that hard and we've got mechanisms to deal with it already.

All signatory countries to global copyright agreements would uphold the terms regardless of where works are registered.

>> Fees are mostly to disincentivise keeping works from public domain

Your cure is worse than the disease. If I understand this right, works need to register and pay a fee to be copyrighted. So if I take a picture of my smiling family, post it on FaceBook without registering it (and paying a fee) it's automatically public domain?

So it can be used in a brochure by any political party, company, gun advert, whatever, without my consent and without any renumeration? And this is ok so someone can make crappy remixes of Milli Vanilli songs?

>> Regarding governments, just like we establish residency for income tax purposes, you could establish residency for copyrighted-work creation.

Excellent. So you're saying big companies and rich people pay pennies for copyrights in copyright-havens, while poor people get screwed.

>> If you register an off-shore tax-haven company today to receive your income while you reside (and work) in another country, when found out, you'll be charged with tax evasion.

um, that's not how tax havens work - and very much don't work for companies. Tax havens are completely legal for companies, they maximize tax avoidance (which is legal) not tax evasion.

> Your cure is worse than the disease.

It wasn't my proposal. My original response to the GP comment was that I'd avoid registration and only introduce registration/renewal fees after a certain short (compared to existing duration) period, like 10 or 15 years.

> ..my smiling family...

On top of me agreeing that requiring registration when publishing sucks, hopefully privacy laws stop your family photo from ever being misused.

On the topic of tax havens, you are right: my bad for misrepresenting stuff.

I was just trying to point out that you receiving your income somewhere where your government can't see it (either in cash or in a foreign bank account: plenty of 'poor' people evade tax in this way, even service workers in the US) does not change your tax residency. IOW, residency rules are well defined, and they could apply equally to copyright-residency.

But since copyright registration should be, IMO, voluntary and only after an initial grace period where copyright protection is automatically assumed, residency matters only in avoiding registration/renewal "migration".

> So if I take a picture of my smiling family

Btw, let me cover this one again. Copyright for the photo of your family actually belongs to the photographer. But because it has humans in it, author can only use it for whatever purpose those humans agree to. Without explicit permission from the photographer, you might not be able to use it for any purpose either (eg. print it out and put it on the wall).

I don't know where you live, but laws like that don't exist everywhere. And of course the photographer gets copyright. But most family snaps are taken by the family. I'm taking about phone photos here, not studio pics.

Are you really suggesting that all photos posted to Facebook or WhatsApp should be in the public domain?

I am suggesting what? How did you arrive to that conclusion from me saying eg.

> I'd avoid registration and only introduce registration/renewal fees after (a period of 10-15 years)

After that initial period (whatever it is, maybe even longer), do you seriously think you'd be disadvantaged from someone using a non-humans-containing photo from your Facebook?

As for photographer holding the copyright, I am mostly pointing out a legal nuance today that is never enforced. And many of those photos you are in — selfies excluded — you don't have the explicit right to post (but neither does the photographer but not because of copyright).

As for them being taken by family, family members have sued each other for less :)

Regarding "which government" don't we already solve that issue today? The holder of a copyright (or patent) today will often economically benefit the country they reside in. Recognition is mutual because otherwise the system wouldn't work. Sometimes there are disagreements, for example India and certain pharmaceuticals.

I guess the real issue is how such a system would cope with different countries setting different fees. Would this need to be agreed on globally in order to work? Otherwise you could register your copyright in a country with a more favorable fee structure yet enjoy the same global protections.

Patents are very different to copyrights. At the most fundamental level patents are registered and paid for. Copyrights are immediate and automatic.

So the suggestion is to make copyrights like patents, because, that system has proved to work so well?

Another difference is scale. Every photo you take is copyrighted to you. Immediately. For free. You're suggesting that every photo you take should incur a registration fee? Or that every photo everyone takes should be in the public domain?

As someone who makes decent income via royalties from my copyrighted work, I object to this proposal.

Purely from a record keeping perspective, the additional work required for my small business would add a considerable burden. And my accountant would probably have to do the math - thus costing me even more in fees.

Large corporations like Disney and MCI are not the only entities who use copyright to protect property and income. A single creator like myself (been in the photo biz for 32 years now) can make a living in this realm.

Yet I fight to defend my copyright every year from infringement and misuse. It is difficult and exhausting enough without additional burden.

Just in the past few years a new breed of lawyers has been cultivating the business of pursuing infringement. I’ll be honest, my income has been boosted from the frequent settlements from the lawyers that now represent my work. I’m amazed how many deep pocket companies expect to use (my) content for free without much worry. My work is incredibly expensive and difficult to produce. Honestly it feels like sweet justice to make them pay.

Creative Commons exists for those that want more liberal copy sharing. Copyright does not need “fixing” from my perspective.

Copyright is something that is granted by the general public because as a whole everybody benefits from new works. This has been subverted in Europe, in that artists are entitled to have control over their works in ways other people don't. For example, an engineer has no control over an object after it has been sold. Nor do the heirs of an engineer get royalties if an object becomes rare an later gets sold for a lot of money.

Currently, too many works are effectively lost because it is unclear who has the copyright, or the rights are spread over too many people that effective negotiation of a new contract is impossible. There are also plenty of works that people consider part of their culture, where the rights are held privately. Famous cases in Europe are the Atomium in Belgium (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomium) or the Little Mermade in Denmark (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Mermaid_(statue))

The most simple way to fix the current system to limit copyright terms to 20 years.

There is no need for a copyright system where the heirs of a artist makes more money than the artist themselves.

And as a business, if to can't make a good return on an investment within 20 years, then it is time to do something else.

Copyright is there to incentivise people to create more. If you can sustain yourself from royalties from, say, works you created 20 years ago, copyright has failed us (you included, even if it provides you financial stability, because it's not encouraging you to be your best self and create more great works!).

While you do raise some interesting points about financial aspects of the situation today ("deep pocket companies expect to use... for free"), I think they are rather symptoms of the current system.

Many companies are deep-pocketed _because_ of the copyright system like it is today. But if you were able to more easily reuse work of others to build on, which would benefit civilisation as a whole, wouldn't that bring the costs and difficulty of your work down as well? The benchmark should be how LITTLE protection we can give to creators for them to continue to create!

Sure, you've invested in yourself and your business with the rules as they are, but that should not stop us from thinking of what the rules should be for betterment of human kind.

Copyright needs fixing so that heirs cannot grift off the hard work of those who actually had creative ideas.

I don't think heirs getting money is a significant issue. It's the restrictions on use of said intellectual products and the persecution of those that use said work by our common powers i.e. states/police.

Freeloading heirs get inheritance in many ways, mostly real-estate and companies I think. Society stratified into feudal classes is a big issue, but I don't think we have many examples from authorship (for now).

I don't mind and I think society shouldn't mind other people freeloading or probably even having resources - it's a sign of envy and destructive. It's only when those who have affect those who don't through scarcity or influence that I have issues.

My ideas are quite different from yours. First I would drastically shorten the time, and not link to the life of the author, instead I would have fixed time from first release, with a max of 40 years. The current amount is simply way too long, 40 years is a normal "economically productive" time for a typical person, longer than that is not necessary.

Registration is a good idea, but I would do it different. Everyone gets 20 years automatically for free, with no registration needed. (Small players, for example I write an essay and put it on a website, need to be protected. You don't want to force 12 year old students to deal with registering their works.) After that you can pay to register a work, a fixed fee that goes up each year for the final 20 years.

My issue with your idea is people holding things, and refusing to sell them - for example old software. It's illegal to distribute, but also it's not for sale. So rather than going by revenue (which would be 0 here), have a fixed amount, $100 is not enough.

I also don't like percent of revenue - that's basically taxes, people already pay that, there's little point in doing it via copyright. What's the issue you are trying to solve with percent of revenue, that is not also solved with a fixed amount?

> I also don't like percent of revenue - that's basically taxes, people already pay that, there's little point in doing it via copyright. What's the issue you are trying to solve with percent of revenue, that is not also solved with a fixed amount?

It's supposed to be a tax. You're being taxed on holding something out of the public domain, which in theory is harming the public. Using a percent of revenue makes it more fair -- if it were a fixed fee, there is no fee you can make that Disney won't happily pay to keep everything forever that would be affordable to the small creator.

At the very least, if you don't want to do revenue, make the fee a percent of the total income of the owner. Of course Disney could again avoid that by making small companies to own things.

> Registration is a good idea, but I would do it different. Everyone gets 20 years automatically for free, with no registration needed. (Small players, for example I write an essay and put it on a website, need to be protected. You don't want to force 12 year old students to deal with registering their works.) After that you can pay to register a work, a fixed fee that goes up each year for the final 20 years.

If registration is fee I don't see why there would be a burden on anyone. But sure, you can make it automatic for the first five years or whatever. But that makes it hard to tell if a work is an orphaned work or just not registered yet. If you find a work you like, you'd have to wait in your system 20 years to make sure it wasn't unregistered.

> My issue with your idea is people holding things, and refusing to sell them - for example old software.

How can you set a fee that's high enough to stop Microsoft but not be a burden to a small developer?

> First I would drastically shorten the time, and not link to the life of the author, instead I would have fixed time from first release, with a max of 40 years.

My system is also not linked to the life of the author. We can certainly debate the number of years, but under my system, you'd be giving 1/3 of your total income from your work as a tax after 40 years on top of your regular income taxes.

In order to fix something, you first have to articulate how it is broken. And it seems to me that, from the replies, there are many different ways people perceive the current system.

Some are clearly thinking mostly about software - patent trolls or old games that can no longer be played. Others are concerned with writing, like songs, books or blogs. And for some reason Disney and Microsoft are the ones out to buy everything.

IMO software doesn't need much fixing other than the eradication of software patents (which, um, is not copyright). We don't need central govt registries for software (even before we discuss which govt - I assume they meant the Chinese govt - I mean why not - they have the largest population, don't bow to business pressure, and are good at beurocracy.)

So back to copyright - you made it, you control it, the only question seems to be - for how long? Which leads us to the question of why it should indeed ever expire? Patents have a public good when they expire - but what public good happens when copyrights expire seems less clear to me...

> Which leads us to the question of why it should indeed ever expire?

It's the 21st century, nothing stops us from simply copying works with absolute impunity. The question is why even recognize copyright as legitimate to begin with?

Society is doing creators a favor by pretending their works are artificially scarce. We allow creators to profit from their works. Public domain is actually how things are naturally: after data is created, it can be copied infinitely at negligible costs. We enable the artificial scarcity that allows creators to profit from their works.

There has always been an understanding that eventually the works will return to the public domain. Creators are supposed to make money for a while but eventually the party is supposed to end. We're not here to enable their eternal rent seeking. If they want more money, they gotta make new stuff.

Every time copyright duration is extended, it's a slap in the fact of the public. We have been blatantly robbed of our public domain rights. No one's ever been bold enough to suggest straight up eliminating our rights though. At some point copyright infringement becomes civil disobedience and a moral imperative.

Limited time because it is in the Constitution. But also it allowed others to build on your creation. Sherlock Holmes is a wonderful example. Most of Holmes is in public domain. And recently the has been a rich at of culture created. Movies, television series, additional books. Personally I think the main thing that is broken is the the expiration date. The Constitution says "finite" and while there is a finite limit any limit that is longer than the average lifespan is essentially unlimited. Basically nothing created in your lifetime will be in public domain. And to me that goes against the spirit of "finite"

I agree, the time limit seems arbitrary. And sure there are a handful of works that are famous enough to allow for the creation of new, obviously derivative works.

Not that we are exactly short of original movie and TV content - but now we can have a few more derivative sherlock homes, so yay...

So if finite means a time limit, then isn't any limit arbitrary? Should an author live to see their work exploited in their own lifetime? If we make it say 40 years, how will RMS feel when oracle starts deriving Gnu Hurd code to make a new OS?

The first release of GNU Hurd was in 1990. So Oracle could use that release to build from in 2030. Do you think Stallman's copyright on the 1990 release of GNU Hurd is still giving him the fuel he needs to keep creating?

From https://copyrightalliance.org/education/copyright-law-explai...:

> The primary purpose of copyright is to induce and reward authors, through the provision of property rights, to create new works and to make those works available to the public to enjoy.

I think knowing copyright ends in 40 years would do more to incentivize new work than the current set of rules. If a copyright is held by a corporation, the duration should probably be half of that. Having copyright last beyond a creator's life makes no sense to me at all because nothing new is created by that person.

> So back to copyright - you made it, you control it, the only question seems to be - for how long? Which leads us to the question of why it should indeed ever expire? Patents have a public good when they expire - but what public good happens when copyrights expire seems less clear to me...

A good question indeed! And, fortunately, one history is well-equipped to answer. You might find the history of the Statute of Anne interesting - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne In short, perpetual copyright means that publishing is essentially governed by private laws rather than public ones.

Some, particularly Americans, may also find it relevant that non-expiring copyright is quite clearly forbidden by the constitutional clause that enables copyright to exist.

I'm not sure the linked article explains the public good in copyrights expiring - perhaps that the public had access to topical works improving their lives? Would that be true now? Even allowing for the fact that many copyrighted works are currently distributed freely?

Maybe I could phrase the question this way - after how much time should, um, Microsoft be allowed to take a GPL licensed work, and use it in their own closed code? 10 years? 20? 50? Never?

Some would contend that preventing perpetual private censorship improves the lives of the public.

Personally, I would be very impressed with any code still useful for incorporation into current things after 20 years. Certainly worth unshackling the original work from copyright.

Prepare to be impressed!

All the following are still actively using code that I'd more than 20 years old;

Gnu user tools, as used in Gnu Linux. Linux kernel. Pretty much all databases. (sqlite for example is 21 years old). Much of Windows, and Ms office.

Not to mention mountains of my own code, still in production. 20 years is nothing in coding terms.

Most developrs I know are small or single, and have one or two products they've been working on for over 20 years.

Linux 2.4 was pretty good, but even most of my IoT junk runs 2.6 which isn't quite 20 years old.

MySQL 4.0 was a lot better than 3.23 IIRC, and isn't quite 20 years old either.

IMHO, it's not so bad for the old version to become unrestricted; more recent changes can still be restricted. And 20 years of updates are often compelling enough to submit to restrictions.

What number seems right to you though? 95 years for work for hire or death of author + 70 (which is gonna be fun to track down for open source works with many author) seems rather long to me.

the parent posted,

>> I would be very impressed with any code

And I would argue that _lots_ of the code in today's shipping products (which I listed, and others) use lots of code laid down more than 20 years ago.

Sure there's lots more in Linux now, but lots of the code is also basically unchanged from 20 years ago. It's not like GREP gets a complete rewrite every 5 years...

I'm not saying that I'd be up for using a Linux install from 20 years ago, but hey "any code" is a lot more than "complete install".

> public good happens when copyrights expire seems less clear to me

People can build upon the original work to make it better or use parts of it in their own work, instead of making things from scratch (things like music remixes, free translation, restoration of obsolete software etc.)

I hear this argument, but eh. You want to write a song, go write on, you don't need to mix someone else's. And if you do, go pay them something instead of just freeloading.

Translations from one language to another I get, but again, if you want to make money translating books, go talk to the author and give them a share. Or write your own book in chosen language.

Unless you have the source code to obsolete abandoned software you can't build on it anyway. And if you do, and it is abandoned, then who's to stop you building on it now?

And again, what _public good_ comes from any of this? If you want to create, then create, don't remix..

What do you define as a public good? All of these can be done with lower friction when copyright expires. Is that not a public good? Maybe it's a minor public good in your eyes that is outweighed by the benefits to the individual, but it certainly qualifies as something advantageous for the public.

> and it is abandoned, then who's to stop you building on it now?

A copyright troll who just sits on copyrights without doing anything about them. Again maybe you argue that it's their right to do so, which is fine and is argument that perhaps the hit to an individual good is not worth the public good provided, but it's clearly also a public good, however small, to remove that copyright troll.

(Also in the particular case of music there is a very finite cap on the number of copywritable musical phrases, since there are comparatively very few musical phrases that are compatible with Western musical theory and aren't just noise, we're already seeing lawsuits over this. With an infinite copyright system it's very possible that effectively all new music would have to pay royalties within a few decades)

EDIT: To put it another way, freeloading is basically just another way of saying "public good" (a library is allowing patrons to freeload off publishers, a public park is freeloading off property, etc.). It's just one that implicitly prioritizes individual good as well (which is totally fine, the two are often in tension and must be balanced against each other).

First time I've heard of copyright trolls, so it's worth unpacking that..

If you knowingly reuse a work, then I'd argue they are not a troll, they are a copyright holder, so go figure out a license fee.

What about unknowingly using something they claim? That's more subtle, and I buy the argument there. Copyright expiry would help to avoid nonsense claims. But maybe sane courts can adjudicate that - then again Sane Courts (laughing).

But aiming overall copyright expiry to limit nonsense claims, would also prejudice real works that need real protection. So do we lose more than we gain?

So assuming expiring is good - lifetime of author plus a bit?

> You want to write a song, go write on, you don't need to mix someone else's.

Why I don't generally like bringing up fiction as proof of my words, Melancholy Elephants story has a very clear and explicit answer why this is a bad idea: http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html

On top of the examples already in the story: Disney's empire is built directly on the back of directly using public domain works or remixing existing works. And yet, you want to prevent anyone from doing just that.

10 years from the date of publication, possible extensions while derivate works like sequels are still being produced up until the death of the author. No inheritance. For corporation-owned copyright, same principle, but with an upper bound of 50 years.

After expiry, the authors should retain a right to call a derivative work original/canonical, but enjoy no other protections - so I can make my own James Bond movies, but they won't have the "canonical" stamp. This right would last a long, but finite amout of time (max 150 years) and would be inherited (to somewhat equalise individuals to corporations, since nobody lives that long).

Remove copy right. Everyone must be allowed to copy. If you’re selling devices, you must provide schematics and software sources to users.

That's a beautiful utopia, but sadly I don't think it would fly in today's world. Also, short copyrights serve a useful purpose of encouraging invention. It's the length of time that's the problem, not that it exists.

Copyrights don't serve much of a purpose for inventions. Patents on the other hand...

Actually they prevent a competitor blatantly ripping off entire chunks of your work verbatim. This encourages spending time on R&D that you otherwise wouldn't be able to justify because "our competitor will just copy-paste it".

You don't need anything remotely like life of the author plus an additional half of a lifetime to realize that protection though.

Kim not sure what schematics have to do with copyright. But removing copyrights will essentially end the era of professional artists. It won't be impossible, but it will be difficult to be an author it musician for a living. The era of multi million dollar budget movies will end.

You're right. All that pesky GPL code should just be public domain right? I'm sure RMS would dig that.

So Spotify should just keep 100% of revenue for themselves instead of paying royalties?

Why would Spotify have revenue? Surely we would all download our music at the tiny marginal cost of the required internet bandwidth.

I guess all the artists will love freely distributing their music as charity.

> How would you fix copyright?

Mandate something about source code for software. For eg. Source code escrow with Software Heritage or your software isn't protected by copyright. The source code is automatically released under GNU AGPLv3 after 10 years or immediately if you stop developing it and escrowing new versions of it. After 20 years it becomes public domain.

https://www.softwareheritage.org/

Measuring revenue sounds like a total pain in the ass, and sounds ripe for "hollywood accounting", and like a pointless jobs program for lawyers and accountants. How do you measure the revenue gained from the copyright on iOS? The total value of the devices it is sold on? Some arbitrary percentage? What about the copyright on a piece of artwork selling tickets to a gallery? Or for that matter a movie, with movie tickets, and merchandise? Or a song performed live as part of a concert?

I'd suggest a different system, you have to name a "public domain bounty" for the work, and pay X% of that per year (+$100). At any time anyone can pay that bounty and the work reverts to the public domain (so that they, and everyone else, can use it). You can, of course, adjust the bounty as it becomes more or less valuable for you to keep the work private.

The government keeps all the money (to avoid perverse incentives to raise bounties if you expect someone to pay it).

---

Edit: But I'm much less ambitious than you, if you asked me how to fix copyright from scratch, my answer would be "reduce the term to 10 years, and require registration". It's not perfect, but it's simple.

When I first thought about this, I also landed on the public bounty method. The problem with that is it lets monied interests own everything. If you, a small creator, make something cool, there is no bounty you can set that Disney can't afford, and once they make it public, they can certainly exploit it better than you can.

As for revenue accounting, it's actually pretty easy (for some definition of easy). If someone else used your IP and you had to sue them, how much would you sue for? Use the same method to calculate your own income. Yeah, it's definitely a jobs program for accountants and lawyers, but overall it provides a strong public benefit.

This might be fine for welthy Americans, but what about those who aren't? You're allowing hobby authors and musicians to be exploited. Also what about international works? Particularly those from poorer countries? 100USD is going to be unobtainable for people from some African nations or Indian states.

The one benefit of copyright being free and automatic is that it benefits everyone equally.

> How would you fix copyright?

By abolishing it. Which I don't think is that radical of an idea.

Would we come up with copyright today if we didn't have it already? I don't think so.

The system as a whole makes no sense as something that the government need to be involved in when it comes to enforcement and the "promotion of the arts"

If we're talking about wholesale reform the burden of proof is one those arguing for that continued trade-off being worthwhile.

Today everything from graffiti and the SMS messages you're sending to your mom, to a major Hollywood movie is protected under the same system.

You could always right point out exceptions like Banksy for graffiti, but does that mean it's worthwhile for society as a whole to apply these blanket protections just in case someone comes up with a a worthwhile work they'd like to commercialize?

The small bits of copyright that are worthwhile in practice could be salved under some system that worked much more like Trademarks or patents.

I.e. you can't set up your own news site that copied articles from the NYT on a daily basis and charged for them, or the same with movies, but it would be on the narrow basis of directly interfering in someone else's (business) operations in a way that shows real demonstrated day-to-day harm. Or, you could pay an exorbitant fee (like a patent) to buy protection for a specific work when used in a specific way, which throw a bone to "big copyright", such as Disney.

But to quote even an entire article in a book you're writing on the subject, or include a 20 minute clip from a Disney movie in a review you're preparing? The "copyright holder" shouldn't be able to do anything about that.

Copyright was implemented at a time when the government and the people had an interest in things like the newspaper being as pervasive as indoor plumbing, or the water supply.

It should probably be phased out in the say way many publicly run postal systems have (which you can argue is a bad thing, but it's absurd to claim that they're as relatively important to society as they were 100 years ago).

I like the idea behind IP of protecting small companies from larger companies that just copy them and then have the budget to just out market the smaller company into bankruptcy. Large companies don't need this protection as they have the marketing budget to compete with smaller or other large companies.

The issue I see is that intellectual property is too complicated and expensive for small companies to use that only large companies actually use it and they use it to abuse smaller companies.

I think the best REAL solution for small companies is to just get rid of intellectual property all together. IP didn't stop facebook from just copying snapchat or countless others, Microsoft, Google and Apple are all the same doing it too.

Remove IP laws an smaller companies will be able to look at cool stuff Larger companies do and innovate on it. China isn't ham strung by IP like this if we in the west want to keep up with China, we need to be able to continuously improve on our innovations and IP prevents this.

I believe registration would be an unnecessary burden for smaller publishers (eg. I write something, I want some protection for it).

I like your idea of "renewal", and it might make sense to equate the patent term with copyright term: 15 years (maybe 10 years?) after publication (there's a bunch of edge-cases already covered by copyright law since "publication" can be way off from "creation", but one would certainly have to tread carefully).

After those initial 10-15 years expire, unless you register and renew, work moves into public domain. There should be financial incentive to not renew (iow, it should be expensive and perhaps proportional to the term and revenue from works), and I can't see why should anyone benefit from copy-protection past their lifetime. Perhaps even a shorter cap.

Year 8: 8-5 = 3, so 3% of revenue (from that year or from the previous 3 or 8 years?)

Year 11: 11-5 = 6, so 6% of revenue (from that year or from the previous 3 years?)

14 : 9% of revenue

...

103 : 98% of revenue

106 : 101% of revenue

If minimum revenue is $100, you wouldn't pay that much until year 103. But would it remain at $100 at year 106 onwards?

Edited: fixed math to subtract 5 years instead of 3.

Year 8: 8-5 = 3, so 3% of revenue (from that year or from the previous 3 or 8 years?)

3% of the last three years of revenue (first 5 years you keep everything)

Year 11: 11-5 = 6, so 6% of revenue (from that year or from the previous 3 years?)

Previous 3 years.

14 : 9% of revenue ... 103 : 100% of revenue

Check your math. :). Year 103 would be 103-5=98%

106 : 103% of revenue

Same math issue.

> If minimum revenue is $100, you wouldn't pay that much until year 103. But would it remain at $100 at year 106 onwards?

Minimum fee is $100. Every 3 years you pay at least $100 to keep the copyright.

Looks like I got the 3 and 5 years mixed up and started subtracting 3. I fixed the original post.

Copyright was a reasonable bargain when printing a book involved a large up-front investment of typesetting it and then printing all the copies that would ever be printed from that setup. It didn't affect most people, just printers. And it enabled authors to make a living from writing.

It became fairly dubious in the age of photocopiers, but fortunately was little enforced, except in the USSR. A photocopier was useless without typeset or handwritten text to copy, and the copies degraded every generation, so publishing houses were still needed.

Now every computer is a book-copying machine more powerful than the entire publishing industry a few decades ago: it can transmit a gigabit per second, and for a one-megabyte book, that's 125 copies a second, 10 million copies a day, 3 billion copies a year, so copyright is a constant danger to everyone. Fanfic sites are full of people sharing stories they wrote with no expectation of making money. The age of the rich celebrity authors like Isaac Asimov or Ernest Hemingway ended decades ago, not due to xeroxes but due to TV. The best software is free software, as copyright makes proprietary software untrustworthy, creating incentives to stuff it with malware. And, even if Elsevier were paying researchers instead of vice versa, the idea that copyright on research papers could fund research is as ludicrous as the idea that people would stop singing songs and telling stories without monopoly profits.

Apps, videos, and websites constantly disappear due to (often groundless) accusations of copyright violations. Police evade accountability by playing copyrighted music, rendering any recordings of their abuses copyright violations. A mutual friend of ours committed suicide after being prosecuted for copyright violations that might have been fair use; we'll never know.

So, I would set the copyright term at zero years. Legal monopolies on preserving and sharing knowledge are not only useless in today's world, they are harmful, a monstrous menace to the integrity of the historical record and to private communication.

(Originally posted, slightly modified, at <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29384318>.)

To get copyright on a digital work you must submit+register a copy. Once the copyright expires, Library of Congress hosts it as a torrent. Max copyright term 20 years, and/or fee increasing exponentially to renew each year.

I would fix it by removing it. I haven't once seen copyright being used to protect "the little man" (not saying it never happens, but I'm a bit sinical when it comes to big corps) Why not abolish the idea of copyright and let stories / characters / etc. take their course. At first this will probably cause chaos as people scramble to churn out a metric ton of material that was once locked under copyright but hopefully in the long run this will lead to an increase in overall quality of material as people start to be more critical of the things they consume.

I think the key concept is that a hit song/film/book owes as much of its success to its audience as to its creator. Returning super succesful properties to the public domain faster reflects this.

A similar argument could be made for open source software, you don't want anyone to have full control over any key element of the software ecosystem, because at a certain point theyre just milking the venefits delicered by the wider ecosystem.

Corporations may be the same.

Wouldn’t it be easier to use a simpler mathematical formula? First renewal is fee^2. Second is fee^3, etc. Balance the fee and the term, but eventually you’ll hit a point where the renewal fee is a trillion dollars. If Disney wants to pay off the national debt to keep copyright on “Steamboat Willy” I’m not going to complain.

That avoids the income reporting aspect and allows people to make straightforward time-based predictions on when something enters the public domain.

I worry that any fixed fee pushes out small publishers in favor of large ones. Disney can afford any fee you put that a lot of small publishers can't.

> First renewal is fee^2. Second is fee^3, etc

What's a cubic dollar?

If you went this route, I’d push it out farther and make the cut steeper. Maybe after 20 years you start doing X%, where X is (Years - 20)*2.

I really don’t want to make it harder for people to survive on their creative output for their whole careers. But that’s the focus: providing for a family, maybe even fabulously, but for one generation only.

I don't see why someone should get to live a lifetime on their creative output. My goal is to make it harder to do that. There is no reason someone should be able to make one hit song and then never work again.

> There is no reason someone should be able to make one hit song and then never work again.

It makes people want to do it, hence providing the incentive for more creation. Frankly, if someone writes a good song then I'm happy they'll do well off it, we need more good songs and that song will last a lifetime for the listeners too.

> It makes people want to do it,

This is red herring. I doubt you could find a single musician who would tell you that they wouldn't be creating if they don't get a lifetime to exploit the work. Further, you can see proof of this through history. Copyright used to be much shorter and people still created.

Most people who create, especially people who make good music, do it because they love it, not because they will get to exploit it.

Art must be distributed to be appreciated. There will be demand for it: customers, each furiously waving their cash offer.

Someone is going to render that art for consumption in exchange for that cash. My conviction is the artist should have right of first refusal to grow rich with that cash. I confess this conviction is a moral conviction, driven by a sense of fairness, not efficiency. “The suckers compulsively produce it for free,” doesn’t find much purchase with me.

> Most people who create, especially people who make good music, do it because they love it, not because they will get to exploit it.

Do you think they write more or less because they make money from it?

If I shared one song and made money then would the chances of me sharing another increase?

Why not? If the song is that good. Our put it another way, of person A makes an awesome song, why should person B make a bunch of money off of it 50 years later?

> It would be published on a public ledger.

Waiting on the first mention of a possible usage for the blockchain in 3… 2… 1…

If you separate blockchain technology from the idea of distributed systems, it would be a great technology for the problem. The government would be the only user who could write to the blockchain, but you'd get a beautiful record of ownership!

Maybe for big IPs, but fees for tiny ones doesn't make sense. If I make a drawing, or a song, or Youtube video, I don't want others to be able to copy and profit off of them, and I also don't want to pay $33/yr for every single thing I create.

5 years duration. More than enough time to make a fortune. No extensions ever.

Excellent. I'm off to use all GPL software older than 5 years in my proprietary code. I'm sure RMS wont mind. He's made his fortune. That's what you meant right?

No problem with that. Copyright shouldn't even exist anymore to be honest. Copyleft is just an attempt to make the most of a bad system and has no reason to exist in a world without copyright. Stallman would not want it abolished it, of course: all free software depends on copyright.

You want to copy GPL software? Sure. We'll copy yours too. That's the way things should be.

5 years flat, no extensions.

Why should the government prop up your failure to market something?

How would this work for copyleft property? Once the work enters public domain, doesn't matter what the developers do, any company can incorporate their work and charge for it.

>Minimum fee of $100

This comment is a Disney psyop, pay no mind fellow readers

How do you handle things without revenue?

Revenue can be used to determine the cap on the actual damages that may be awarded in a successful copyright infringement suit.

Moreover, copyright suits should only allow actual damages + cease and desist (copying).

Thus, if the work has no proven revenue, and the copyright holder sues someone for infringement, the only remedy they will obtain from the court is an order instructing the defendant to stop the copying.

Copyright lawsuits where no actual damages can be awarded wouldn't even go before a judge necessarily. There could be a hearing and some summary decision handed down: you assert the copyright, and the defendant is served the prohibition order. If fees were awarded to the plaintiff, they would be limited to absolutely minimal amounts related to the filing of affidavits and whatnot (documented by receipts from the court registry); the system would not allow some copyright troll to act in collusion with lawyers in order to rack up legal fees to extract from defendants.

From what I understand of OPs rules, it could remain under copyright indefinitely (you don't care if the fee is 100% of your revenue if your revenue is 0).

Yeah that was a flaw in the system. I updated the rules to have a minimum fee.

Good point. Minimum fee of $100?

That seems really low. The point of copyright is to incentivize people to create more art, so We The People can experience more art. If you're not going to sell your art, why are we enforcing your rights at all? I'm not saying you don't have a legitimate reason to share your art with all except one person you hate, or to keep it locked where no one can see it, but I am saying that there's no need for Us The People to use our government apparatus to help you with that.

I'd abolish intellectual property as a category. Yeah, there's no chance this will happen short of a communist revolution or something, but you didn't ask specify whether the fix would be practical.

Yes, this would abandon patents and strengthen trade secrets, but with no IP laws trade secrets would eventually either be leaked (because you can't keep secrets indefinitely) or reverse engineered.

Workers already have to sign contracts granting their employers all the rights to their output. Without IP laws they could just walk off and build on their developments if they wanted to.

The renewed interest in trade secrets would also drive some innovation in how businesses can cooperate without spilling their beans because simply licensing their IP would no longer be an option. Without trademark protections a lot of the more blatant trademark infringements would probably just be treated as fraud (e.g. impersonating a well-known brand).

IP laws reward ownership, not innovation. Inventors seldom get to keep their inventions unless they're wealthy enough (read: own enough capital) to begin with. The prolific fan fic communities and countless amateur musicians (both garage bands and online "creators") demonstrate that creative expression does not depend on compensation as they're already barely making any money off their labors of love.

You'd of course probably want some public grants but most foundational research is already publicly funded because private companies are too risk averse to fully fund research with no immediate path to monetization. I think systems like Patreon could also become more important, maybe even to the point that they could be supported as public infrastructure the same way banks are (in some countries anyway). You could still justify protecting your likeness via privacy laws, but there will always be fans who want to know the band merchandise they buy actually is licensed by the band they love, not just churned out by some third party (on the other hand, consider etsy and its creators' rampant "derivative works" of major well-known franchises).

Or for a less radical approach:

Limit copyright for creative works to the author's lifetime. Dad wrote the next Lord of the Rings on his deathbed? Too bad, you better hope he sorted out a good publishing deal that'll survive him. Abolish copyright for software. Sorry, your ecommerce website isn't Hamlet.

Cap patents to a fixed number of years, say 10, and ban software patents. Also require that a patent filing actually provides enough information to be able to reproduce the work given all other publicly available information. Want to patent your AI that requires a secret training data set? Tough. Want to patent your crazy new dating algorithm? Better provide an example implementation in the public domain.

> you better hope he sorted out a good publishing deal that'll survive him

Presumably this wouldn't help if the copyright didn't survive him, as anybody else would also be able to publish the work.

That's why I said "good publishing deal". Yeah, anyone can re-publish the work but the publisher you signed the deal with can't and it's in their interest to maximize sales.

This would destroy the largest community driven around art: furries. It would also, in the process, destroy independent publishing in general, for hire artists, small businesses, and only really end up entrenching more the establishment by introducing more thing that must be maintained.

Your fee structure turns my $20 shitpost profile pic commission into a several hundred dollar affair. It also provides zero of the protections that currently used de facto copyright gives.

Let me give you a simple example of how your system fucks over a small independent artist, such as your typical Etsy sticker seller:

Let's say I'm an artist who makes profit off selling stickers on Etsy, but not really enough to give up my day job. I sell stickers for $5 each at a $1.50/ea profit for shy of $150/yr in profits across 20 or so designs. Under the current system, I should register my designs under copyright system, but I'm granted de facto copyright under the law for most cases where someone copies my design whole cloth and making a profit from it. If I register my designs, I gain several additional, useful protections, all for the low low price of $0. I now have to do nothing in order to retain those.

Better: I don't have to reveal my identity, a feature that may be useful in situations where the kinds of products I hock are considered in some way unacceptable (porn, or content the producer would prefer under a pen name).

Under your suggested system, that small Etsy seller I describe now has their name and details in a public ledger (not great for sex workers, photographers who may be the target of hostile nations, contrarian writers, etc.) Then, the renewal fees become a bear. After eight years of meager profits paying for their beer tabs, the 20 designs that the Etsy seller hocks will put them on the hook for at least $2,000, likely even more.

What you've described is a basic regressive tax. I've even gotten a fantastic little way around your system:

All my IP is legally owned by a shell company, owned by me, who licenses my company, also owned by me, for $25/yr, the ability to use that copyrighted work. I take all the profits from that and assign all related copyright of such profits to the shell company. Now the shell company literally exists with no other assets than its licensing revenue and and IP, which can be written off as a loss in the long run.

The shell company runs at a net loss over time and I pocket 100% of the profits.

This is actually done today already and is why you have copyright holdings companies that exist entirely to be bureaucracy management for the system, and are the ones you see suing the shit out of teenagers pirating a copy of Aladdin so their cousins have something to watch while Uncle Joe beats his wife.

How would I fix copyright?

1. Ban logo copyright. Most logos are already simple enough to be considered public domain but actually drop the entire logo purpose. Conversely, allow them to be trademarked and service marked.

2. Place heavy fines and revocation of privilege on false copyright infringement claims. One of the worst parts of our copyright system as it stands is the DMCA. While useful at its core, a lack of actual repercussions for its improper usage and SLAPP-like usage to harm the public good.

DMCA strikes are used to take down material which is not actually the copyright of the filer in more cases than not. For instance, DMCA strikes take down content related to making perfectly legitimate backups of movies and other home media, commentary on that material, and otherwise perfectly legal content that is not under the copyright of the DMCA claimsnt but the claimant would rather not people know about.

Currently, the only zing on the DMCA is "under perjury of law" that the claim is accurate. This is the legal equivalent of a pinky promise and a wink. It looks scary but it's absolutely the case that the DMCA gets abused as a SLAPP mechanism. When does your ability to file a DMCA complaint get revoked? Never.

Read through Chilling Effects' DMCA logs. They're fascinating. Also go read TorrentFreak on occasion for their commentary on DMCA takedowns, such as this gem where someone asked Google to take down... Localhost: https://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-firm-asks-google-to-blo...

3. Designate what is a long term and what isn't in copyright land.

I have an idea that I've kicked around for over a decade now about how to handle effectively abandoned properties and IP. It revolves around Gabe Newell's commentary on piracy: piracy is a response to a lack of availability in the digital age. There will come a point after which it is impossible to purchase a legitimate, perpetual license to something such as a book, movie, etc. At that point, all legitimate copies are on the second hand market. No revenue can be reasonably expected from that thing by the original seller. How can the original seller claim damages if they no longer offer a legitimate way to acquire the item?

Once this point occurs, once no legitimate mechanism for getting a copy of something exists, especially for durable goods (such as books, but not for things like stickers), when does it become abandoned? My take is 10 years. Once a purely digital copyright work is impossible to get legitimate for 10 years, it becomes abandoned: nonprofit duplication is legal, but for-profit duplication is not. After being abandoned for 30 years, the work is released to the public domain.

There's some exceptions: art has a weird place in the digital world. A fine line is drawn over what is archival and what isn't.

4. Destroy estate ownership of copyright extension. No more "the author died 50 years ago but the estate has the copyright into the next century" shit. Author died? 10 years for anything not abandoned.

5. Establishment of cultural copyright ownership/destruction of copyright on cultural heritage. Allow the LoC and other organizations to induct copyright works into a historic register of cultural touchstones. These items are considered long lived multigenerational items which should be placed into the public domain outside their usual timeline. Works over 25-30 years at minimum.

6. Fair use for incidental but otherwise prominent use of a copyright work during performance and its subsequent recording and replay.

This is 100% targeted at music and other content in twitch streams, YouTube vlog channels, and more.

Passing by a stall playing top40, having music in the background during an artist's stream should not affect their ability to continue. Broadening fair use is Essential.

so first off regarding your plan - there used to a be a funny checklist going around, why your plan to fix email won't work, (but I can't find that on the internet anymore because we all know search doesn't work) so I can't make a very precise parody of it but:

Why your plan to fix copyright won't work:

1. It does not take into account the different understandings of the purpose of copyright in other countries than the U.S.

2. It makes things more difficult for the creators of copyrightable works, and makes it easier for unscrupulous individuals to take advantage of creators of copyrightable works.

3. It makes things more difficult for small companies, meaning that bigger companies will be able to take advantage and increase their power.

On the first point, the understanding of the purpose of copyright in the U.S is that it is promote the common good, in the EU the understanding is that it is to protect the rights of people who have created something and have a moral right to ownership of the thing they have created - based on the Berne convention https://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/summary_berne.html of which by the way the U.S is a signatory.

At any rate your fee setting and registration rules perfectly aligns with the purpose of increasing the common good, but does not align very well with the moral right to ownership of ones work. Now before when the U.S increased the copyright term limits obviously countries that believed in the Berne convention were willing to sign on to that because increasing the term limits can theoretically be helping the creator of a work (although in practice probably not) but all this other stuff not helping will mean if your rules were enacted in the U.S the international structure of copyright would have to fall apart.

On the second point, why is it difficult for creators of copyrightable works? Well, unfortunately not everyone is good at everything and it has been noted in the past that many artists, musicians, writers are not especially good at organizational skills and as such are often liable to get taken advantage of by unscrupulous people who are good at these things. Do I have to provide links to examples of this happening, or to the assertion that people in the creative professions are often lacking on the organizational front or can this be taken as a given? As such putting another thing they have to manage and they will have to keep managing for as long as they want to derive any profit from their labor on their plate is going to increase the chance of their being taken advantage of. Someone will now undoubtedly say but they will just hire someone to do it for them, which will be forestalled hereby by noting you have to be doing relatively well from your labor to afford to hire people to take care of these kinds of things for you (and this of course will keep some people from doing well enough to hire the persons needed to help them), and even if you are you can get ripped off by the people who are supposed to be helping you organize things.

On the third point, smaller companies will have trouble doing this has already been handled in the comments.

> If you have multiple works in one product (think Marvel movies) then all revenue goes to the oldest work (that way you can't avoid the fee by putting new and old characters together).

so a work is no longer a book or a movie, but a character?

now as far as how I would improve copyright, part of one of the problems copyright faces is that in countries outside the U.S fair use is either a non-existent concept or it is much diluted. I think it would be nice to import the American concept of fair use to these other countries but it would be a hard go running into that Berne convention moral rights thing I noted earlier. But maybe doable.

For creators, some sort of unified treaty about copyright reversion. This would probably go over good in Berne convention aligned countries because follows moral rights philosophy.

One of the main problems with copyright is actually the DMCA, so fix the DMCA to not make it so easy for people to squash things.

finally people have a problem with the term limits of copyright. This is a hard thing to fix, basically I would think the copyright of works is a little bit of too long now - I would say 60 years or the life of the creator whichever is longer. For companies obviously has to be 60 years then. So someone writes a book at 20 and lives to be 85 they have 65 years, someone writes a book at 65 and dies at 67, the book remains in copyright 58 more years after death and their kids get taken care of if that book happens to be the best selling children's book of all time or something like that.

Characters created in one work etc. are copyrighted from the time of their first creation.

for creators as well, lighten or get rid of registration requirement in the U.S (which is required in order to sue for infringement and needs to be timely in order to get statutory damages) or course no European court has this, because Berne convention, so I think it would be nice to align things.