[vertbhrtn]

Whenever someone says that something needs to change for the greater good, I want to say something snarky. Copyright law is like the orbit of Jupiter - it is the way it is because it's a balance of all involved forces - and the only way to change it is to change those forces.

[danielrpa]

It's indeed a balance of forces in a sense. The crushing force of major recording companies vs the small force of millions of artists acting/negotiating independently, meaning that the recording companies get a share proportional to their force.

In the past 250 years, the protected copyright duration in the US slowly went from up to 28 years to up to 120 years (!). It's no accident that the last big change was nicknamed the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_St...

A reversion in the protection periods to be aligned, let's say, with patent durations would still offer reasonable protection to all parties.

[throwaway189262]

Those forces are giant monopolies. The best way to initiate copyright reform is probably antitrust. Once these huge conglomerates are broken up there won't be armies of lobbyists advocating insane copyright laws