My only comment here is, if you can’t create enough quality original works in 30 years to put food on your plate, you’re either a hack artist or a really lousy business person. If you can’t make a go of it with 30 years worth of copyright, get a day job.
The point of copyright is to take the natural state of publicly displayed works (public domain) and alter it so that the creator can realize financial gain. This is necessary to promote creativity, which benefits society as a whole. Extremely long copyrights do not promote creativity, they only promote the long term profitability of companies like Disney. If it weren’t for Disney, copyrights would still be limited to 28 years, don’t be fooled into thinking that the gov’t wants to protect the artist, they want to protect big business.
One other reason these large media conglomerates want copyrights to last for extremely long peroids of time hasn’t yet been touched upon in this thread - it’s because they can occasionally use those copyrights as a cudgel to stifle competition from upstart “small fry” artists.
Several posts back, Primaflora suggested that there’s nothing preventing an artist from taking a work that’s already in the public domain and reworking it to produce his/her original version. She’s only half-right. Let’s assume for my argument that yosemitebabe’s filmmaker friend, who wants to establish his own small studio so HE can remain in artistic control of his works, came up with a brilliant idea for a reworking of the fairy tale “Snow White and Rose Red”. The story’s in the public domain, so he can legally adapt it without any problems. So far, so good.
The problem comes when he goes to release it. His film’s brilliant, and people are really going to like it - so Disney hits him with a lawsuit charging copyright violation, so that they can block distribution of his film. Not a copyright violation of “Snow White and Rose Red” (which is in the public domain), but a copyright violation of THEIR adaptation of the same story - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. They’ll claim he has infringed on their unique adaptation by “stealing” essential elements from it to incorporate into HIS film.
Now, this allegation may be completely bogus - but it really doesn’t matter. Successfully defending yourself against even a specious lawsuit can be extremely expensive. And yosemitebabe’s friend isn’t Spielberg, and his little film company isn’t Paramount or United Artists. He doesn’t have tens of thousands of dollars he can use to fight a protracted court battle (and it WILL be protracted; Disney’s very expensive and very good lawyers will see to that). So unless he can find a skilled lawyer like Lessing to take his case pro bono, or can convince an organization such as the ACLU to represent him, or is willing to give up his dream of promoting his own independent studio with this hit adaptation and sells out to one of the OTHER large media conglomerates (such as Paramount), who have the money to take on Disney, he’ll have no choice but to withdraw his film. Winner - Disney and the other large media conglomerates, who have just strengthened their stranglehold on the film industry. Losers - everyone else.
Reducing the length of the copyright period would forcably divest these mega-conglomerates from some of their cudgels, and give the “small fry” a better chance of competing. Disney is still going to be upset when yosemitebabe’s friend releases his film version of “Snow White and Rose Red” - but they won’t be able to legally block it, and will have to settle for re-releasing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as competition. That gives the “small fry” a fairer chance to successfully compete. And THAT benefits all of us in the long run (yes, even those of us who hold Disney stocks).