IANAL, current public domain rules are basically: - author explicitly uses public domain as a license, - 120 after publication, - 120 after registratio

IANAL, current public domain rules are basically: - author explicitly uses public domain as a license, - 120 after publication, - 120 after registration, - 95 years after publication if it is corporate work or - 75 years after the death of the author; whatever comes first. Most significant arguments I hear defending current copyright status are: - author have the right to make money from what they create, - their children must still get some of it in the case their parents are authors and die early. I still think the time for content to become public is too long. There are old music recordings from the 50's and 60's which nobody is making any significant money out of it and you simply can't copy to anybody. The same applies to a lot of games from the 90's and the 80's. I think that it would be much more fair if copyright holders had to prove they are still making money out of a published work. If very little money is being made, this means nobody is paying for it or the copyright holder can't sell it well. In this case, the content should be declared abandoned and free to be copied unless the copyright holder demonstrates that money can be made with the content. Reason: abandonware sites are on the fringe of legality, GOG was able to contact a few producers but that is not an easy or even possible task for everything. There are also music from early 1930's to 1960's for which it is not easy to even know who are the copyright holders and you fall on the fringe of legality if you distribute sheet music of it. Also, there are other kinds of works: books, films, cartoons...