So, While your idea ensures public domain for many works I fear it extends the biggest players their perpetual rights because they can afford it as a result of their scale.
They'll lose some initial money of course, if everyone could produce Mickey Mouse shirts, but Disney et. al. would have to come up with new tricks, new icons and try to make new things instead of the constant barrage of rehashed garbage media we get today.
I'm not in favor of long copyrights, but I think in the case there would be a real cultural loss if there was unfettered access to this particular icon. Does that justify full control by Disney at this late stage? Probably not, but some middle ground with increasing costs (maybe an increasing percentage of profit from that brand?) might be worth trying.
The whole system is pretty messed up at this point, so why not test out some interesting ideas? As a side benefit, maybe Disney and others like them won't fight it quite so hard, as it would be costly but not the existential threat to their core brand they see come up every couple evades.
As a counter argument look at Snow White. That story is in the public domain. I think you’d be hard pressed to make a case that that has harmed society.
Regardless Disney will continue to have a trademark on the Mouse. So, it will continue to be a cultural icon for the company. We’ll just also have steamboat Willie generics in the marketplace as well.
Look: sight unseen, having no prior knowledge, I would put money down that I could find a thousand unique images of Mickey Mouse created in 2017 or earlier.
That's just how the internet works, and copyright doesn't hold much sway on that front.
this is full of hypothetical, while we exactly know what would happen because we have concrete case studies to work from, like the old star wars expanded universe.
That ship has sailed already (actually, Magica de Spell is kind of sexy...), so I don't think it's a valid argument :)
The problem is still with the concentration of the media. There is no price you can put that Disney cannot bulk pay for everything they own that wouldn't be destroying any competition from the little copyright holders. So in effect it could decrease competition with the only upside of increasing the government income.
The greater damage from blanket copyright extension is the long tail of works that no one would pay to keep copyright on, but are still protected with the same inflexible term as an ongoing piece of IP like Mickey.
Global GDP before the 50 year mark.
After 30 years if it's not generating $1B a year you let it go. That would make most creations pretty cheap to keep for the first 15 years, corporation level expensive from 15 years to 25 years and global phenomenon level only after 30 years.
If that sounds too aggressive maybe double it only every 2 years.
They should trademark them, instead of relying on copyright.