I would not give it a fixed term, especially not 50 years. I'd start with a short copyright, say 1 year, and extend it based on a few criteria: 1) The curren

I would not give it a fixed term, especially not 50 years. I'd start with a short copyright, say 1 year, and extend it based on a few criteria: 1) The current copyright holder is known/reachable. If it is unclear who owns something, it should become public domain. This implies a more or less centralized registry, where you have to re-register your copyright claim every year. This can give you, say, 10 years of copyright at max for just sitting on a property doing nothing. 2) The copyrighted work is still being extended, e.g. like Mickey Mouse still gets new episodes today. If this is the case, older content also gets an extension, say up to 30 years. Active characters can get their copyright extended indefinitely this way, as long as the author sees value in creating new works. So Steamboat Willy is free to consume and remix today, but only Disney can produce new Mickey Mouse content. If Disney stops producing Mickey Mouse for e.g. 10 years, all of it drops back to public domain status. An artist doing live performance might be considered extension, while replaying a record would not be extension. This means only stuff someone cares enough about to track it will get copyright protection. Only authors that do some minimal effort creating copyright get a long term copyright. There is a perverse incentive here, in that Disney can go very low effort, e.g. scribble a new Mickey Mouse episode on a napkin and use it to claim an extension. Pseudo-creation if you will. Another company, say Netflix, should be able to sue for this, to get the content in public domain. They might settle by Disney selling the ownership rights to Netflix, as Netflix clearly values it, and will presumably create usefull new content.