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There needs to be a push for a nominal fee (even if it's one dollar every ten years). This would allow the big companies to have their copyrights as long as they want (which isn't okay but good luck with that), while putting 99% of copyrights in the public domain.

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Instead of a nominal fee, there needs to be ad valorem taxation (at say a 1-2% rate per annum) on a declared value which also serves as a binding offer to sell the work into the public domain at the stated price. That way, anyone can keep their long copyright, but only as long as they are willing to pay a fair price for keeping the work out of the public domain.

There should be an initial period of several years (somewhere in the 7-13 range) where copyright remains free.

yes, and make the tax monotonically increasing, so that the majority of works are released as soon as the value of the work wanes.

Wouldn't those copyrights effectively end up in the public domain anyhow? The defacto nominal fee is an attorneys retainer.

De facto public domain is pretty different from official public domain. One ends up on, for example, Project Gutenberg and the other does not.

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