All sound recordings prior to 1923 will enter the US public domain in 2022

It took 7 months for the Sonny Bono Act (of Sonny and Cher and at the time congressman) to extends the copyright from 50 to 70 years. I would call it pretty fast when you think it took several years for congress to vote the last "infrastructure" law (remember 2017's infrastructure week?).

By the way, that law was sponsored by Mary Bono, Sonny Bono's widow (Sonny Bono died during that year) and also congresswoman.

All this is a neat little circle of people voting laws for their own benefits. This has nothing to do with artists or small businesses.

I think it is fair to say that once the original author of the work is dead, the copyright should go with it. And if a corporation buy the copyright, then they should be able to recoup their investment in a timely manner and 10 years is not that huge with all the means of electronic distribution we have today.

Good point! :D

Not OP, but I think it makes very little difference whatever number you pick between “none” and “forever”.

Earlier this year a few authors whose work I enjoy tweeted furiously about this topic. Similar arguments may apply to audio and visual copyright.

If, for example, copyright lasted 14 years, then The Atrocity Archives (Stross) would already be public domain, which reduces incentive to create more in the series (not sure why, I would have expected new novels have new copyright, but I trust an author to know what their own motivations are, and I refuse to second-guess).

Now, these various authors on Twitter argued that being an author is poorly paid (it is), and that they would like to offer someone an inheritance comparable to a widow/er pension.

I can sympathise with that.

But, sales in most things decline over time. Sequels more, apparently (I wouldn’t know, one of the authors tweeted that). If income falls off exponentially with time, half the income for some specific work will be in the first x-months, 75% in 2x months, 99.9% in 10x months — I’m saying months rather than years because of how fast best-seller lists change, I don’t have real data.

Conversely, the reason for such a decline is that almost all the people who care will have bought the work soon after it is published. Making copyright last 100(average of all x) fails to harm society by preventing the work from becoming public domain, but only by the same[2] as it fails to help creative people commercialise their creativity, and for exactly the same reason: almost nobody cares any more. This remains true even if the income curve isn’t exponential, as the benefit to society is simply not having to pay for it[3].

Certainly I’m not rushing out to download some copy of inter-war music, radio broadcasts of whatever category, or newspapers; and I don’t even know if that’s for lack of money because I don’t care. I suspect I’m not alone in not caring.

Indeed, I only oppose zero/infinite duration because of the edge cases.

The point of copyright is to give creators an incentive at all besides the default of creative people being patronised or commissioned. This is already a thing — furry art by commission; stories[0] and YouTubers supported on Patreon. As this is not the status quo, if we switched to “no copyright” I expect this will break stuff and bankrupt people who have come to rely on it (this also means I oppose sudden changes in general).

If copyright was infinite, all works world eventually become lost in a legal quagmire of e.g. mergers and acquisitions where the actual owner ceases to be known.

[0] https://www.patreon.com/HamboneHFY

[1] except where the income per unit is too small to process ($0.001 per person times US population is still a lot of money).

[2] or losing track of who owns it, or [1]

This is mostly an urban legend. Yes, some amount of the increase in life expectancy is due to reduced infant mortality. But it’s nowhere near the bulk of it.

Plenty of UK nobility has no substantial assets to speak of other than a house that’s ten times bigger than they need and a constant money pit.

The traditional way out is to marry a rich commoner who wants their children to be titled.