If the fees were set appropriately, it would be difficult to abuse. Under this scheme, "High Noon" would be leaving copyright this year. If the fee was 5% and

If the fees were set appropriately, it would be difficult to abuse. Under this scheme, "High Noon" would be leaving copyright this year. If the fee was 5% and the current owners said it was worth $500k they would have to pay $25k to keep it. If you thought 500k was a lowball number, you can buy it from them and declare your own value (to where nobody would force you to sell it to them) and pay the fee based on that. The work is then in the hands of someone with incentive to create economic value from it, and the public gets a royalty on giving you that privilege. A company that is just hoarding content that they're not making money on would have a hard case to make to investors.