When I wrote this
Quote:
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There are lots of possible formulas. The basic idea I was shooting for was that absolutely anything is automatically in copyright for 20 years; and anything with even trivial economic value can be renewed for an additional decade. This would mean that most works would enter the public domain after 20 years, and most of the rest after 30.
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I failed to elaborate quite enough.
Nearly all works protected by copyright have realized essentially their entire value in their first 20 years of existence. Thus, no one would bother renewing the copyright even once, and they'd enter the public domain 20 years after creation.
Of the few works that have any significant value after 20 years, most are not worth renewing sometime in years 30-50. Exactly when is not so important as the realization that waaaay more than 99% of all creative works would hit the public domain somewhere between 20 and 50 years after their creation.
The increasing price beyond that point is simply intended to extract some more public value from the tiny fraction of works that are valuable enough to continue renewing after that 50 year period. And also to have an 'out' for Disney and a few other big players in order to have even the faintest hope that a scheme like this might possibly stand a chance of enactment.
Xenophon