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I haven't thought about it in awhile and this is one of those things where it's necessary to think about all the kinks. But if I were president/prime minister/king of the world, I would without a doubt shorten copyright from what it is now and set definite limits.
I don't think I'm a fan of "Life plus" because it can be so arbitrary and shortchange the families of authors who die young. For instance, say the limit is "life plus 20". Now imagine two 20 year olds both publishing smash hits the same year. One dies that same year, while the other lives to 120. One would have copyright protection for 20/21 years while the other would have it for 120/121 years. Even with "life plus or a set limit, whichever is longer" I don't like the ambiguity and unevenness of length.
Just pulling a number out of my head that sounds fair while I'm thinking on it today, I'd say I like the idea of 50 years flat copyright. Even if someone publishes a book at 10 years old, they'd still have copyright until 60.
There could possibly be a set number of extensions allowed, but the problem with extensions is that if it's in law to allow say two extensions, corporations and estates would fight to extend it to three, and then four and on and on just like Disney is currently doing, so it's a slippery slope to have extensions.
Nevertheless, I say, in the infinite wisdom of what's floating in my mind at this minute, three extensions may be allowed- the first for 15 years, the second for 10 years and the third for 5 years; and each extension shall require a hefty but not exorbitant fee, to encourage only popular works making money to extend their copyrights. The gradually decreasing number of extension years would also encourage future lawmakers to leave it as it is. If each extension is the same, such as two extensions of 15 years each, corporations/lobbyists/etc. could simply try to add an extra extension of the same into law and it seem normal and conducive to what the law already was. Whereas, with diminishing years, it plainly makes clear that it's meant to definitively end there which would hopefully give more resistance to attempts to alter it in the future.
This would give authors/estates copyright for 50 years basically free or comparatively cheap, and up to 80 years if it's making money and they wish to extend copyright. That would mean every copyrighted work would be in public domain before it's a century old, but still in copyright for most or all of the author's life. Even if an author wrote a bestseller at 15, they could have copyright until 95.
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