What's a reasonable time, then? 10 years? 20? From when it was published, or when it was written? It can take years for a manuscript to move through editing, and many of our beloved classics did terribly their first run or two.
Is it anymore fair should a publishing house go all 90's Star Wars on works their stable of authors wrote a few decades after first publication, with the authors not seeing a penny from them?
75 to, what, 150 years may indeed be too much, but the answer is not so clear as to what the alternative should be.
I don't know what time is reasonable, but I think there has to be a deadline at some point.
I'm trying to argue that if after a finite X amount of time the work falls into the public ___domain, then very likely nobody will make very much profit from that work in its unmodified original form at all, unless they provide some sort of service that is of value.
Also it opens new opportunities for _everybody_ to build upon the previous work with a unique and good fresh idea, which they can then try to market.
The original author had their fair chance to make money and monetise their idea to the best of their ability. Now let's find out what other people can create from it.
Copyright could be separated into multiple tiers that expire over time. First all rights reserved, then CC-BY-NC after 20, then CC-BY-SA with moral rights to protect living authors' reputations, then CC-BY, then CC-0.
