[mattnewton]

We ran that experiment of dramatically shorter copyright terms, and it produced much of the culture you know and love before 1975. Copyright has been extended in 1976 and then again in 1998 mostly at the behest of rent seeking corporations who bought the culture after it’s creation and after paying the authors handsomely for it. Calling Disney’s business “marginalized” seems ridiculous to me?

[caconym_]

See my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31688954

I'm advocating for copyright from the perspective of independent creators, not big media conglomerates. Additionally, my comment is (explicitly, if you read closely) addressing the case of copyright being completely dissolved, which---as crazy as this seems---is an idea some people apparently support. You need look no further than this thread to prove this to yourself.

I am not necessarily against shorter copyright terms. Honestly, since the main reason I support copyright is because it protects independent creators' rights to their own work, I would be totally fine with completely striking the postmortem copyright period for non-corporate authors (certainly, 70 years is insane) and cutting the pseudonymous/corporate terms in half.

[mattnewton]

Then I think we are in violent agreement. People who say “copyright has gotten out of control” or “is the cost worth it to society” largely are complaining about the current state of copyright where it lasts generations in my experience. Nobody hates the creator of culture they love, the hate the lawyers strangling anyone’s ability to participate in that culture in any way other than as a consumer. If we turned back the clock to 1975 levels of protection, we would get a public domain again which is good for creators, and creators would still have long periods to profit off their labor. The next Disney could be born as the first Disney was, by remixing the rich public domain. Of course that wouldn’t be good for the current disney monopoly and so it’s unlikely to happen.