[shiftpgdn]

I saw someone on here who proposed a simple sliding payment scale to keep things out of copyright after 5 years. 100 years out it might cost $1 million/year to keep it out. That way things naturally fall out unless a company needs to keep it in copyright.

[koolba]

That might have been me. The idea is to have an exponentially growing fee paid to maintain a copyright after some fixed initial term.

If Disney really wants to keep Mickey out of the public domain, they could do so by paying ever increasing fees into the public coffers. It might be worth it to keep their handle on things for $1B a year. And if not, then the public gets it.