[owlbite]

I'd definitely favor a system where you get 10 years of copyright for free automatically. The next year of protection requires registration and a fee of $1. It double every year after that (tune the exponential function to be broadly equivalent to what we currently have if you need to appease Disney).

This encourages IP owners to use it or lose it.

[ok_dad]

No law of the land should differentiate itself based on a fee or payment of any kind. In other words, no one should be able to just spend money to get a better treatment under the law, period. I like the idea of a 10 year limit through!

[autoexec]

I agree, in a world with instant global distribution at near zero cost 10 years is plenty of time to make money on your work, and that term should apply to anyone no matter how much money have.

I also like the idea of a requirement that whenever possible a DRM free copy of a work must be submitted to the copyright office in order to apply for copyright protection so that anyone can go online and see who owns the copyright on a work and how much time is left on it. The copyright office would then automatically make that work available at their website after the expiration of the 10 year period.