[ndriscoll]

40 years seems like the highest defensible limit. This would mean if you created a work in your 20s, copyright would expire when you're eligible for social security. It's safe to say that if you haven't made money on your work within nearly 2 generations since its publication and before you become a pensioner, you're not going to. Or it's at least not going to drive you to create new works.

Corporations can't wait even 20 years because tastes change. There's not much mainstream demand for Sum 41 anymore. Also corporations can't have much margin on public domain material; there's too much competition if anyone can publish it, and for digital creations they'd be competing with legal p2p sharing. So they need that exclusivity.

[actionfromafar]

I'm fine with 70 years post creation, it's 70 years post death which is too much IMHO.

[HenryBemis]

> There's not much mainstream demand for Sum 41 anymore.

Perhaps not for Sum 41. But how about Beatles? Elvis? Michael Jackson? Metallica?

I don't know if people will still be listening to Swift and Eilish in 50 years from now, but something tells me that Beatles, Iron Maiden, Michael Jackson, Sinatra, will echo for eons..

[dkersten]

> but something tells me that Beatles, Iron Maiden, Michael Jackson, Sinatra, will echo for eons..

Sure, but should a corporation continue to make huge profits from these artist who will be long dead?

[jpc0]

Or the estate, read families, of these artists?

Not all copyright is owned or even licensed to organisations.

It really is a bad feel if you created something, then 20 years later someone releases the exact thing you created and make millions and you don't get a cent of that money.

Also many people after retirement age probably need the income from royalties a little bit more than when they were in their prime, not less.

[dkersten]

The comment I responded to said eons to come. I’m perfectly ok with tying copyright expiry to death of the artist, plus a little extra for the immediate family. I don’t, however, think that someone should be entitled to free money just because their great grandparents or other ancestor was a successful artist, the same way I don’t agree that someone should be entitled to free money because their ancestors happened to start a bank or oil company or be a monarch or whatever.

[jpc0]

I agree with this and that is what the current law defines.

That isn't what the entire comment thread is discussing though so I misinterpreted your comment. Apologies

[dotancohen]

A simple, naive solution I've seen proposed would enable copyright extension on an exponential fee scale.

This has the nice side effect of wildly-successful works disproportionately funding the copyright offices, thus enabling theoretically lower fees for newcomers.

[PurpleRamen]

> Corporations can't wait even 20 years because tastes change.

Corporations create the taste. They can even wait hundreds of years. Just look at how many old stories are remade today. Unless there is something extraordinary, hyped for longer than a summer, they will wait all they want.