It seems that the EFF position is "we want free music", and does absolutely nothing to address culture and access to culture.
20 years at most IMO, anything longer damages cultural progress.
Copyright is nothing like a natural right, so it's not really the EFF's place to make a convincing argument against it, more the proponents should be convincing the public to extend this favour.
It would be great IMO to link renewal to revenue, but too difficult in practice (and too many potential loopholes).
One problem with early, high cost, renewal fees is that companies know they can wait out an individual; you're not going to pay a £M renewal without already having done serious revenue.
It can take a long time to get a new technology, or a new book, or whatever, to market -- the IPR system needs to enable individual creators.
Charge proportional to declared value, with the declared value also an offer to accept payment from any combination of parties to buy the work into the public domain at that price. (It's not exactly based on revenue, but based on value to the copyright holder, but that's close enough to the same thing.)
* If you're creating something for the first time e.g. a small indie game, you need to know before you release it whether or not it will become the next minecraft.
By buying them out at a price set by the competitor involved, sure, and only after the first renewal is due, sure.
Of course, a monopolistic incumbent can have the public (instead of tolerating monopoly rents) and prospective competition band toether to buy it's technology out into the public domain for competition to use, too.
> If you're creating something for the first time e.g. a small indie game, you need to know before you release it whether or not it will become the next minecraft.
Well, no, because we are talking about the method for setting a renewal tax for copyright, not an initial one. So you have to have an idea of how valuable it is to you before the first renewal.
(I like the 4-12 year granted period proposed upthread, but using the declared value approach I would probably go with annual renewals with a long limit—maybe even the current maximum—rather than 6mo renewal with a 21 year cap.)
I might keep the idea of having an exponentially escalating fee by doing that for a required floor to declared value of a work (maybe even instead of a maximum time limit.) Have a nominal floor at the first renewal (say, $1 in today's money) and increasing by 50% each year, with the annual fee as 5% of the declared value. Sure, you can keep renewing as long as you want, but after 50 years of renewals you're at a $32 million minimum renewal fee.
That's actually the only scenario where this copyright extension will cause the creation of new works. Barring that, yes, it's just a money grab by copyright holders (most of whom are not even the artists who created the works).
Their argument is that the government extending copyright should be balanced by some public good (such as releasing more works in to the public domain).
Without such a public good being served, this is just a money grab by the copyright holders. These are generally are not the creators or artists, but rather publishers and other corporations. So if your support for this legislation hinges on the illusion that its the creators or artists who will be the primary beneficiaries of it, you might want to reconsider.
Their article is not meant to persuade you of that, but to inform concerned people about how to contact their representatives.