> If there are millions or billions in profits available for making worthwhile IP of lasting value There aren't - not through increased copyright length, anywa

> If there are millions or billions in profits available for making worthwhile IP of lasting value There aren't - not through increased copyright length, anyway. The value of proprietary IP decays very quickly over time, until the vast majority of works entirely falls hostage to transaction costs of all kinds (see the whole issue with "orphan works", which may or may not be copyrighted but no one knows for sure, and thus no one can effectively make use of them) and their value is entirely destroyed as long as copyright protection persists. The Mario Bros game is actually a very rare exception, and even then its value is really only as a representation of Nintendo's best known franchise, i.e. nobody really cares about the game itself, and there are comparable-quality games that are totally free these days.