[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.