It's too bad that societies haven't done a better job of exploring codified (and in turn universal) solutions to this. For example, having the law only allow te

It's too bad that societies haven't done a better job of exploring codified (and in turn universal) solutions to this. For example, having the law only allow technological copy control measures for a period of 14 years from release, and requiring that in order to use them a clean copy of the software had to be submitted to the Library of Congress (or similar) encrypted with an LoC key. When the software technological control period expired it would still be under copyright, but the public would be assured that even if it was abandoned (as is likely) legitimate owners would not be prevented from running it by a decaying DRM system. For that matter I think encrypted source/asset escrow should also be a requirement for copyright period, so that when it becomes public domain someday (currently effectively forever, but a simple act of Congress could shrink copyright times back down to something sane) the source and assets will be part of that and can be modified and improved, just as copyright was always supposed to be and was a given for books. I can recognize the trust issues this would create, but I still think the public interest (the whole purpose of even allowing IP in the first place) should have strong weight.