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Presumably, once the copyright is allowed to expire, it can't be sold and then reinstated.

I'm okay with large corporations pouring their money at the government to keep copyrights for useless things alive, even if it means we can't legally copy useless things for a bit longer.

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> Presumably, once the copyright is allowed to expire, it can't be sold and then reinstated.

Derivative works have their own copyrights. The original book is free for grabs but each movie franchise has it's own copyrights. Likely far more valuable and ones the original artist will never see a cent from.

Wouldn't they then buy it just before expiration ?

Exactly, if the clock is ticking for them to bid on it, to buy it off the small business, it gives the small business power, and should also make it easier for the small business to get decent loans/investments.

Btw, if I'm not mistaken, I first read about this proposal in the book "Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society" by Eric A. Posner and Eric Glen Weyl

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691177502/ra...

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