[Oxidation]

Copyright in general is far longer than most people expect. In most of the world it's at least 70 years after the death of the author. Most people will not live to see even their grandparents' generation's work enter the public domain.

[Breza]

Copyright lasts much longer than necessary to incentivize creators. The last Civil War veteran died in 1956. Imagine he had written a memoir of his wartime experience and that current copyright laws had always been in effect. That means a book about events from the 1850s would still be under copyright!

I think copyright should last long enough to encourage the following type of creation: An author writes a fantasy book series. The author publishes books in this fantasy world for the next 25 years. Then she signs a deal for the movie rights and the studio spends 15 years producing a trilogy. If copyright only lasted 50 years, the entire fantasy world would still be under copyright for a decade after the last movie was released (and that movie would be protected for 50 years).

Now think of the benefit to society. The '60s and '70s produced a wealth of cultural content, and modern culture would benefit from seeing that material enter the public domain.

[nfoz]

Most people I know don't have any concept that copyright does or should expire. They think if Disney makes a movie, it's Disney's movie forever.

[LadyCailin]

If it didn’t, Disney would not exist, given all the public domain works they have built the company off of.

[infogulch]

> Disney would not exist

Nonsense. Disney would make plenty of money on Frozen 17 with Snow White in the public domain. Extreme copyright lifetimes just stifle public creativity and are an excuse to implement draconian and authoritarian practices.

[musicale]

I assume PP meant if copyright didn't expire, Disney wouldn't exist.

Though I'm not sure that Disney would have been deterred in every case.

[nfoz]

I know, but they don't. Outside of creative tech/art spheres, most people don't know much of anything about copyright, and telling them about "works expiring into the public domain" seems to violate their preconceived ideas about "property". It's tragic.