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I like returning to the notion of relatively short, but renewable periods of copyright (With the work needing to be registered). That achieves two things. 1. There can a public database that can be used to check the copyright status of any work. 2. If an author feels a work is selling well enough he can apply to have the copyright extended to some degree. The exact maximum number can be discussed, but by and large, anything much over 50 years is probably done for the benefit of either corporations or the relatives of the author. Based on the chart, it looks like only a handful of works are still being published by their rights holders within 20 years of their release... so 20 years should probably be the point of the first renewal.
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Bill
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