10-15 years max, that should be more than enough to make plenty of money from whatever you create, then it belongs to the world. I've heard people argue against this with: what about when the artist gets older and has to retire? Or, what about leaving something to their kids? Well, save and budget properly and learn how to live on your pension, just like everybody else.
Copyright belongs to the person who made the thing. A legal entity like a corporation can lease the right to use the thing, but it can't own the thing.
If the copyright holder dies before the copyright term is up, it goes to the public domain. Someone tried to argue with me once that this would lead to artists being killed so people could get out of paying them, but I'd counter that the instances now of artists being killed so someone else can inherit their copyright is basically zero so I don't really see why it would go any differently the other way.

Some of that probably needs dome fine-tuning, but it has to be better than the current system whereby you end up with mega-corporations endlessly milking shitty derivative works out of someone's creative efforts a century after they're dead, or people who's full-time job is to cash-in on something their grandfather wrote, the copyright now having become multi-generational.

[–] IsThisLemmyOpen@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If the copyright holder dies before the copyright term is up, it goes to the public domain. Someone tried to argue with me once that this would lead to artists being killed so people could get out of paying them, but I’d counter that the instances now of artists being killed so someone else can inherit their copyright is basically zero so I don’t really see why it would go any differently the other way.

Um yea... I don't like this idea. I rather just have law that sets a time where upon publication, a timer starts. The term of the copyright should not be depedent on the health of a person. What if a writer die like a week after publishing a bestseller that would've made millions? Their family shouldn't be deprived of the money just because the writer has bad health.

But all your other points seem reasonable.

[–] CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Oh yeah I can definitely see that. I was thinking in terms of avoiding the "what if someone was murdered for their copyright?" argument, by just removing any incentive for that to happen. But then obviously that can cause other problems too. Like I say, it needs some fine-tuning!