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As Willingham writes in his release: "The current laws are a mishmash of unethical backroom deals to keep trademarks and copyrights in the hands of large corporations, who can largely afford to buy the outcomes they want."

Willingham describes how his participation in the entertainment industry has made him *more* skeptical of IP, not less. He proposes capping copyright at 20 years, with a single, 10-year extension for works that are sold onto third parties.

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Cory Doctorow 2y ago

This would be pretty good industrial policy - almost no works are commercially viable after just 14 years:

https://rufuspollock.com/papers/optimal_copyright.pdf

But there are massive structural barriers to realizing such a policy, the biggest being that the US had tied its own hands by insisting that long copyright terms be required in the trade deals it imposed on other countries, thereby binding itself to these farcically long copyright terms.

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Cory Doctorow 2y ago

But there is *another* policy lever American creators can and should yank on to partially resolve this: #Termination. The #1976CopyrightAct established the right for any creator to "terminate" the "transfer" of any copyrighted work after 30 years, by filing papers with the @CopyrightOffice. This process is unduly onerous, and the @AuthorsAlliance (where I'm a volunteer advisor) has created a tool to simplify it:

https://www.authorsalliance.org/resources/rights-reversion-portal/

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