True. But historically things entered the public domain within people's lives, which amounted to the same thing.

Under the laws before Disney began rewriting them, the copyright on many of my childhood nostalgia items would be expired, or close to it. Until 1909 the law was a 14 year period with an optional 14 year extension. Until 1976 the law was a 28 year copyright, with an optional 28 year extension.

Since 1976 the requirement in the US Constitution that copyright be "for limited terms" has been circumvented. Literally nothing new has entered the public domain, and much has been removed from it. I'm 40. Until last year there was literally nothing that had entered the public domain in my lifetime that had not been removed from it. Somewhere between now and 1923 I fully expect everything that has reentered the public domain in my lifetime to be removed from the public domain again.

People no longer have the experience of things entering the public domain. People have lost track of the understanding that there is supposed to be such a thing, let alone why it is important. I'm firmly in the minority that is both aware and thinks that it is a travesty.

The fact that copyright used to last for N years in 1909 is irrelevant. Whether or not a law used to exist should not determine whether or not a law should exist, for obvious reasons (slavery, universal suffrage, mandatory military service, etc.).

It would be cool to explain explicitly why things should go in the public domain after X years instead of N years.

There needs to be a judgment call about the explicit rule to have. That said, I think we have made the wrong tradeoff.

The principle embodied in the US Constitution is that the purpose of intellectual property is to maximize the development of the common public domain that we can all benefit from. Therefore copyright should have a long enough horizon to provide a sufficient incentive to encourage innovation, but should not be longer than that.

What fraction of the economic value of the average copyrightable work is captured in the first 30 years of its term? Most of it. In the first 70 years of its work? I saw an estimate of over 99% of it in one of the amicus briefs in the Eldred case. Therefore the real difference between current copyright law and perpetual ownership is less than 1% of possible value. That extra 1% is not material to people's decisions about whether to create new works, and therefore increasing the term of copyright further should lose compared to the economic value of having more material enter the public domain. (After the case was lost I saw Lessig mention that one of his mistakes was not pushing this line of economic argument more strongly.)

Anyways, given how the court ruled, this is a moral argument regarding future copyright laws and not a legal argument based on which one could overturn further bad laws.

It's not a legal exception, but one of the problems with copyright is that the illegal solution is often much more convenient. And in this case outright superior with the addition of multiplayer.

There should be a mandatory licensing rule in copyright. (Like there is for covering music.)

Pay a fee and you have the right to distribute the [modified] games. And they can't say no.

It will break some models that rely on sales areas, but instead of take-down notices when someone violates copyright, you simply send a bill, with reasonable, non-punitive rates.

It needs some details to be worked out - in particular the rates, plus how to determine how many times the work was distributed. But those are solvable, and I think it would transform piracy from a problem, to a revenue source.

It would also help avoid all those messy areas where copyright rules cause real problems for people who just want to do something.