The rights to Ms. Pac-Man are caught up in a messy legal battle

(I got to see some design artifacts while working with her on a Sega Genesis game. You can find a mention of this, as well as a picture of her as a vampire, here: https://www.arcade-history.com/?n=the-spectre-files-deathsta...)

I like the idea of initial automatic copyright (like it currently is); though I think the duration on that might be better as 5 or 10 years.

Lets go with 10 years for the first initial, automatic copyright, just as a starting point. Also add in one additional year to allow for paperwork filing; so 11 years. Past that point in time I'd like to see a requirement for continued registration (and a filing fee that increases exponentially); I also would like compulsory rates per type of work. Those should be set by the library of congress (and contestable by lawsuit). The compulsory rate also requires furnishing, for a reasonable fee, a unit of the work that is unencumbered by technological restrictions preventing the study and modification of the work in question.

I'd be surprised if your assertion was true.