[acheron]

Totally agreed.

The other thing that frustrates me with Netflix et al. is how much better they could be if we had sane copyright terms. At a length of 30 years, which seems quite reasonable to me, we could have the classic cinema of the 70s easily available by now, rather than relying on Netflix or Amazon to renegotiate streaming deals every couple of years. Hell, even with 50 years we'd be getting something -- the animation of the 40s, Hitchcock movies of the 50s, etc. But with copyright essentially infinite in duration now, things fall into obscurity though no easy way to distribute and obtain them. (OK, obviously anything Hitchcock is always going to be for sale, but you know what I mean.)

Think about how wide the selection of Netflix discs was, essentially through what some people call a "loophole".

[gdilla]

But the copyright holders are organizations which are very much alive. Copyright does and should expire after some number of years post death of original rights holders if they're individuals. We need copyright law upgrades, especially for digital media, like removing geographic territories which are traditionally negotiated region by region. That is insane when you're talking 1s and 0s and www distribution.

[warfangle]

> But the copyright holders are organizations which are very much alive

According to some views they're alive ;)

> Copyright does and should expire after some number of years post death of original rights holders if they're individuals.

Unless it gets retroactively extended again.

But that brings us back to "securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries" (emphasis mine)...

Why should works be excluded from the public domain for (nearly || more than) a century?

If anything, we should have _shorter_ copyright terms now. Or at least have manual renewal requirements with fees that increase geometrically with respect to time passed since original publication. Works that are no longer worth retaining the monopoly on fall into the public domain where they can improve the commons, while works that are still (like Mickey Mouse) generating hefty profits for their owners can continue to be renewed until the cost is too onerous.

[gdilla]

I don't know. There's something to be said about profiting off your work while you are alive. Corporations on the other hand, are an odd beast since they can have long lifespans where the rights can be transferred easily to a new organization, and the cycle continues.

I do believe it's generally good for innovation to let copyrights expire.