Quote:
Originally Posted by Xenophon
With a 20 year initial term, 10 additional years for each renewal, a $10 fee for the first renewal, and a 10x fee increase for each subsequent renewal it would cost $1110 to hold copyright on a work for 50 years, and a bit more than $100,000,000 to hold copyright on a work for the maximum period of 100 years.
What do you folks think?
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I like it Xenophon.
Along the lines of your thought process, I'd add that the only individuals allowed to extend a copyright should be the artist, or in the event of the artist's death, the spouse and/or dependants of the artist at the time of the creation of the copyrighted work. (If the copyright died with the artist I'd be fine with that too.) [edit]Once dependents are over 21 they lose the write to extend copyrights.[:edit]
It would be nice to see something like your proposal get made into law. I know most nations follow the Berne convention (treaty?) on copyright law, which sets death+50 as a minimum. I wonder if renewable copyrights with an initial term less than 50 years are allowed by this agreement. (I think 50 years is way too long for an initial term. I much prefer 10 or 20 years with the option to prepay.)
I'd also probably vote to revise the formula for fees. Fifty years for $1110 seems really cheap and $100,000,000 for 100 years seems really expensive. I'd suggest the following formula:
First 10 years are free
10-20 years costs $100
20-30 years costs $1,000
30-40 years costs $10,000
40-50 years costs $100,000
50-60 years costs $200,000
60-70 years costs $400,000
70-80 years costs $800,000
80-90 years costs $1,600,000
90-100 years costs $3,200,000
i.e. increase by a factor of 10 until year 50 then double thereafter until max 100 years is reached.