You are assuming that perpetual copyright is beneficial to society.
Time limited copyright (say 10 years) almost certainly is beneficial, perpetual copyright is harmful both culturally and in the long run economically.
Time limited copyright (say 10 years) almost certainly is beneficial, perpetual copyright is harmful both culturally and in the long run economically.
Perpetual copyright on copyrights as they are today would cause a great amount of work to be lost due to the owners greed and stupidity.
As per my suggestion on licencing a work could become free-use much sooner than the copyright period expires. Anything with no units shipped would mean its a free license.
As I've said elsewhere, and originally, I'm in favour of 20 years and extensions for derivative works, and perhaps then only on the right to produce derivatives and on no other rights like reproduction.
Copyright should be granted for free for a short amount of time.
Once that is up, the copyright holder should have the option of extending the copyright. They should be made to pay for this right, since the extension of the copyright only really benefits them.
This would allow copyright holders to keep a hold of stuff that is obviously profitable, at the same time the vast majority of stuff would enter the public domain.