I don't see that much a problem with it. 95 years or death + 70 years gives the creator and their children the benefit of their copyrights.
How long do people think it should be?
How long do people think it should be?
Also, many works are not by human authors but teams of contract workers who assigned their copyright interest to an employer for a paycheck and waived any long-term interest therein. Obviously said employer wishes to recoup their investment but I'm not convinced that the children of the original shareholders need monopoly protection.
95 years is already longer than the average human lifetime. Betty White died the other day at the age of almost 100; imagine if the 95-year erm had always been the in effect, and consider that only works published before she reached the age of 5 would have become available during her lifetime.
I'd also make the tax progressive over time, starting with zero for the first few years (basically to give the author some time to market it), and then gradually rising.
What's the justification for taxing it? Well, just as physical property is a monopoly on exclusive use of some thing, copyright is a monopoly on exclusive use of some information. Both take something out of the commons, and yet both also depend on the commons to actually enforce this monopoly and profit from it. It stands to reason that the commons should be compensated.
As long as the copyright owner is willing to pay for it. The first, say, 7 years should be free. After that, the copyright owner declares a value (which serves as a standing offer to sell it into the public domain that any person, natural or corporate, can accept by rendering payment) and pays an annual tax, at a gradually increasing percentage, on the declared value. There should also be a minimum declared value for continued protection, which also increases by age of the work (as well as being indexed for inflation).
The _idea_ of Harry Potter and the Harry Potter books are IMO different things. It's like re-making a move like Wizard of Oz. It's just a new thing, but based on the same source material.