[ghaff]

Registration basically benefits large corporations. There are good reasons why a lot of individual authors oppose orphan works legislation. Disney isn't going to forget or screw up copyright registration. You or your kids might.

Totally in favor of shorter copyright terms though even where there are edge cases where longer terms seemingly have made sense. (In terms of promoting progress of the arts, etc. or whatever the language is, I'm not sure that usually fairly small inheritances qualify.)

[ndriscoll]

Registration benefits the general public, who are the meant to be the beneficiaries of the whole scheme in the first place. The entire purpose is to generate a larger wealth of public domain material. Registration and escrow ensures this happens.