[guard-of-terra]

For example, I believe that every song recorded before 1997 should be available for purchase in any music web store (some regulated part of the revenue should still go to the musicians if they can be located, which is what recording industry association can do) And all of those songs should be free to derive and cover (some small regulated part of the revenue on derived song should go to musicians via the same mechanism).

Or else old people would tend to become unavailable at all because you can't locate original authors. And music becoming available is very bad. Much worse than "scary criminal pirate" bad.

[waterlesscloud]

I'm very much in favor of shorter copyright terms. 15 years is probably too short, but closing in on 100 is clearly too long.

However, we all know that that vast, vast majority of piracy is of newer works and isn't at all related to the fact that copyright lasts too long.

[guard-of-terra]

But it is related to a fact that copyright holders prevent people from convenient access to content in order to squeeze more short-term profits.

For example, tomorrow I'm going to pirate Game Of Thrones S02E01 because there is no way to obtain it where I live: legally, in English, with subtitles, tomorrow. Mind you, many people would still pirate it anyway, but I'm ready to pay, let's say, 5$ if it was possible. And I might even reconsider my position on piracy. It's not so I'm going to pirate it and I feel no guilt because they've violated the contract: they provide content, I pay money.

The only way to fix the situation is legally force them to deliver. This way they lose some short term money, but they gain loyalty, crush piracy and win in the long term.

Same with music. Streaming services already eat at piracy; but not every musician is available on those. Same with books.