5 ms·

They tried that, with much lower fees[1]. I don't believe it's ever come to vote. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Domain_Enhancement_Act http://en.wiki

• msandford 13y ago
  That's a good way of keeping track of who owns what and getting stuff out into the public domain if it's an orphaned work. But it doesn't do anything to stop the infinite copyright of books or movies or music. There's no reason that I couldn't write a book and assign the rights to a corporation which could then pay $1/year on it for as long as the US continues to exist. I think there needs to be some kind of mechanism that eventually forces copyrighted works into the public domain. And it should probably be less than a lifetime.