Amplify’d from www.deletingmusic.com
There’s an article in Techdirt today that discusses just how many books would be available in the public domain if copyright had stayed at its original length. It also references a research article that concludes that the optimal term for copyright is 15 years [PDF link].
I’ve argued in the past in favour of a five-year copyright term, but with indefinite renewal for works that are commercially active, and a ‘use it or lose it’ clause to encourage both a more active commercial exploitation and distribution of a wider array of works and a more vibrant and healthy public domain.
Because far from providing ‘protection’, in most cases, blanket copyright is dooming recordings to be lost to history.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/bcmERb