Stipulate for the discussion that you’re correct; what would your ideal preservation scenario look like? Hollywood DCP servers open to enthusiasts to allow copying of terabytes of movie data to other archives?
If you do that, the preservation problem will take care of itself between organizations like The Internet Archive and the various piracy groups. This might also make it easier politically to crack down on the pirates who insist on distributed unauthorized copies of new releases by making them less sympathetic.
For example, it is pretty common for famous or even some private peoples' diaries or letters to be published. Will you sell me a copy of every single one of your emails? Oh, you refuse to sell them? I guess that means you forfeit your copyright and now anyone can sell them.
The right for a creator to stop the distribution of their own work is pretty important. I agree that we should tweak the tax write-off process to maybe force that work into the public domain, but worked destroyed for tax purposes is only a tiny fraction of all abandonware.
If you retain ownership rights (+ responsibilities) then you don't get the tax write off.
That seems pretty simple, no?
Bring back the 28 year copyright term. Or something similarly sensible.
How much money would Disney lose if Independence Day, the top earning film 28 years ago would become free to replicate this year?
Every bit of their content from the 90s? Likely a fair chunk. Not billions, but real money. That's a lot of the attraction of their streaming service, especially classics like their Princess movies.
Consider it a marketing expense "old Disney hogged IP but we reformed look how cool we are" consider it an investment in up and coming creatives who one day very well might make a successful movie ...
• a founders-duration copyright term – at most 28 years from date-of-creation
• absolute statutory & precedential immunity for any copies made, or DRM-circumventing-technologies created/used, solely for non-commercial preservation – that is, only competing witht the rightsholder in the commercial market would be prosecutable
• whatever extra protections/enforcement options available with formal copyright-registration also come with the duty to deposit/escrow full-quality unencumbered versions with multiple responsible preservation institutions, from the Library of Congress to NGOs, who are free to release those versions at end-of-copyright