If copyright was limited to the original US term of 15 years, you'd see a lot less piracy... and a lot less pointless schlock, as you'd need to create things better than what's available for free in order to sell them and recoup your investment, much less turn a profit.
The perpetual (greater than a human lifetime) term of copyrights we have now is primarily designed to allow rightsholders (a subset of rent-seekers) to avoid competing with their own (far superior) back catalogues.
And you wouldn't have corporations or descendants keeping once-valuable IP around as zombies of their former greatness, allowing them to be used by SJWs as vehicles for social change. Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, and Wheel of Time would already be public domain that anyone could do with as they wish, but nobody could claim ownership over. The most popular reimagining of each would rise to the top instead of the sorry excuses for fan-fiction we have today.
If copyright was limited to the original US term of 15 years, you'd see a lot less piracy... and a lot less pointless schlock, as you'd need to create things better than what's available for free in order to sell them and recoup your investment, much less turn a profit.
The perpetual (greater than a human lifetime) term of copyrights we have now is primarily designed to allow rightsholders (a subset of rent-seekers) to avoid competing with their own (far superior) back catalogues.
And you wouldn't have corporations or descendants keeping once-valuable IP around as zombies of their former greatness, allowing them to be used by SJWs as vehicles for social change. Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, and Wheel of Time would already be public domain that anyone could do with as they wish, but nobody could claim ownership over. The most popular reimagining of each would rise to the top instead of the sorry excuses for fan-fiction we have today.