That’d probably work with music. But it’d be a disaster for authors. Often it takes more than a decade to go from book to movie, for example.

I think copyright should be much shorter, but I’m not sure it’d be right to have a bunch of knock off Harry Potter books, movies, and merch as soon as 2007.

Tolkien is the counter example. There’s no reason we should be protecting his work still today, 50 years after his death. They should be public domain by now.

I think this is demonstrably false. The value of Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Friends and The Office is probably higher than they have ever been, given the proliferation of streaming networks. The Beatles catalog only went up in value, which is why Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson had a little tiff. David Bowie sold bonds based on future royalties. And have you noticed what's playing at the movies? It's all superheroes invented 50+ years ago.

I have an online video game and it has been making a few thousand bucks a year for over 10 years. I'm not really ready for all its art to become public domain just yet.

Why is this a reason for copyright to be 10 years? I mean, that's a valid perspective (though I disagree with it), but this case doesn't provide any new information.

For the record, were did you get the idea that most money is made within the first year? Sure, for the biggest stars this might be true. But lots of "middle-tier" creators depend on royalties from copyright works early in their career to sustain them their whole life.

NASA could put the song on the next probe and promise to pay based on the number of times the song was streamed.