Copyright reform

Once upon a time, the system worked like this. Author A writes a story inspired by a story they read as a kid. they get it copyrighted so that Corporation C can’t just take the story and repackage it and crush Author A under the weight of pre-established market presence. For over 20 years, Buyer B gets all the latest iterations of the story. by the time the copyright wears off, Author A has been well compensated and Buyer B has been incubating ideas. Now that Author A’s story is in the public domain, Buyer B becomes Author B and starts writing a story inspired by the one they read as a kid. Buyer B gets their work copyrighted and the cycle of shared human expression continues.

Here’s how the system works now. Walt Disney creates Mickey Mouse. Disney Corporation makes hella cash. Walt Disney dies, and the Mickey’s Copyright goes to Disney Corporation, who lobbies the government to extend the length of copyright law from 20 years to 130. Entire generations live and die before Walter Disney’s creation is allowed to be parodied. The cycle of shared human expression is stopped short, and that’s how we end up in a media ecosystem filled with sequel slop and remake slop.

copyright should last 20 years base, 30 years max. If the author or artist of a given work dies before their copyright expires, the work is given a mourning period of 3 months before it enters public domain unless otherwise specified by the author or artist, with a maximum mourning period of 12 months.

corporations cannot own copyright, only the person or persons directly responsible for creating the work of art (does not include managerial or delegation roles) can claim copyright.