[BrianEatWorld]

I wonder if a solution would be a payment to extend copyright.

I think the strongest argument in the article is about the disappearance of works, but, as pointed out, this doesn't really apply to Mickey Mouse. Instead of having a universal expiration, which is causing some works to die, have a shorter expiration but then allow those who are still monetizing their works to pay a portion to extend it. This would provide a less grey market alternative to lobbying and perhaps the revenue generated could be put back into the arts.

[acomjean]

I've thought the same thing. This seems like a simple way to deal with it. And since most created works don't make money, even fewer after X years this would seem to do the most "public" good while allowing Disney to keep Mickey.

This is especially true for software games where you can't even get the hardware, thus software sales are essentially 0. A lot of the older games will just get forgotten while the copyright runs out. Some get remade and sold and have no problem with that.

Companies won't like it though, because some will forget to register and loose out on potential profits.

[FollowSteph3]

To make it really work I think the cost would have to go up exponentially with time. Maybe once a decade you pay. And you could even pre-purchase but at the exponential price. This would allow most works protection early on at an affordable price and companies like Disney that make a lot of money to be able to keep their copyrights.

The other major benefit is that if something is successful and people want it such as a book you have a monetary incentive to publish it to pay the copyright fees. When it's not popular enough to make money with the copyright alone than that's a good signal that it's been copyrighted long enough