Our current Federal Minister of Labor Ursula von der Leyen,called "Zensursula", then Federal Minister for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, presented examples of child pornography at a press conference in January 2009, promoting her Zugangserschwerungsgesetz. She was reported to the police, but the report has been struck down. See http://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/article1088198/Anzeige_gegen_Ursula_von_der_Leyen_eingestellt.html (sorry, can't find english text)

From the article:

And I have the moral obligation to call you an opportunist, a shill and accuse you of mudraking to further your goals, Mister Sanger.

IMHO, there are fair use cases, e.g. for educational purposes, for the depiction of under-age sexuality, and if wikipedia doesn't fall under the umbrella of educational websites, I want some suggestions which website does. Hey, here in Germany even our cabinet members can show hard child pornograghic pictures in press conferences.

Without copyright there is no incentive to go public with my works, because other people will steal it. I, as an author, can't produce the necessary physical representations of my work, a huge company can and will, if it sees a chance for profit just flood the market with cheap copys, if i don't have the protection of copyright law.

That's the reason, lifelong copyright exists only for natural persons, not for companys. Natural people will get life+7years+paid extensions, if they transfer their copyright to a company or a company copyrights the work of it's personell, it will be 7years+paid extensions.
To deny authors a lifelong right to copyright seems to me to be akin to communism.

So we concur on this.

Yes I have. You don't have a right to steal my brain's children. If you use them fairly, do as you please, but don't use them to make a profit without paying me a share.

Every "right" is artificial. Without a code of law or goverment to enforce this rights, the one with the bigger gun will have it's way.

I agree. So we have to modify copyright law, to shorten the terms, which i have done by splitting the length of copyright between natural persons, i.e. authors and companys, who will not die.

Why not? Last time I looke at the back of a game there was (c) Company. So they can allready secure a copyright. For the sake of argument let's assume that a company is a conglomerate of authors, who decided to merge their individual copyrights into one, to simplifiy the handling of their right. Since companys are not natural people, f.e. they may exist for longer than a humans life, I split the length of copyright for natural people, i.e. authors (life+7 years+paid extensions), and for companys (7 years+paid extensions).
We may argue about the length of the term, but I would argue, that 7 years is a reasonable length of time. This timespan is even mentioned in the bible for the freeing of slaves. If you don't want to pay for your copyright as an company after 7 years, the work will fall into the public domain, if you pay it doesn't, but you have to pay more every time you want to extend the time you can gain profit, to counter greed.

Copyright law has its origins in the license by the king to make copies and distribute prints. So it should be called permission to make copies and sell them. Somehow this got shortend into copyright.

Since when can ideas be illegal? Do you have thought crime in the US? There allready have been precendeces for amendments to the constitution, that rectified errors, or to be more precise no longer valid assumptions about the way the world works. In Germany we have the "Grundgesetz" which is akin to the Constitution. It can be changed by a 3/4 majority, except for the first 21 articles.
If a law is against the spirit of the Grundgesetz it will be struck down by the Bundesverfassunggericht (constitutional court) as has the Voratsdatenspeicherungsgesetz in February.

For my mentioning of 1709, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne, the base for the provision ratified 1790.

IANAL, and so I just voice my opinion on the matter of copyright.

for the foreseeable future it is. There may by quantum leaps in medical science in the next 50 or 1500 years, but I will not benefit from them.
My proposal is just a suggestion to mitigate some harms or problems currently visible. We might have to iterat the wording of our laws a bit more, maybe every 7 years?

Because they have a longer time to enjoy the fruits of their labor?

With the same reasoning as for normal inheritance of physical objects?

Ah, playing with words and their meaning. IANAL, but from my point of view, right of copyright and right to vote are two different shoes. I'm sure a flock of lawers may argue, that you have the right to sell/transfer your work, i.e. right of copyright, but not the right to sell/transfer your will, i.e. right to vote.

As you may have seen from my eamil-adress, I'm not a citizen of the US and so I'm not well versed with the wording of its Contitution and interpretation of it's wording. I can just state, that laws are not always in the best interest of the citizens the law relates to and times and laws and Constitution have to evolve. Revolutions happen, some people are put against walls, and hopefully we will learn from our errors in the past.

Because it's my work and I want to reap some benefit from it? The products of my brain are, at least for me, akin to my children. And nobody else but me should have a right of control over my children, at least until they are old enough to decide for themselve.

People are motivated by base instincts and one of these is hunger. I want to eat, I want to have a roof over my head etc. True artists create art just for the sake of it, see e.g. van Gogh. True scientists just want to know why, see e.g. Tesla.
We are currently living in a capitalistic society. Everything has it's price. Some people sell the power of their muscle, some people sell the power of their brain. If a work of art/ scientific breakthrough/ brilliant idea is perceived to have a worth, why should the originator of this product not gain some profit from his work?

So why life? It seems a natural boundary.

Wise people will see that, if an idea is shared and multiplied, it will blossom and become more, see e. g. the proliferation of the WWW. So I suppose, that great ideas will be put into the public domain before the originator dies. If this does not happen, one reason might be greed.

That I have a copyright over my work does not mean that others shall not benefit from my ideas, but at least I want something in return for it.

Sorry for the late reply, but Error 503 raised it's ugly head.

If somebody is talented enough to make a work of art/an scientific discovery that pays for his living, you want to rob him of this lucky course of events? Do I smell a whiff of envy?

Look at it as something akin of winning the lottery, if you are lucky and get the jackpot, you can live the rest of your life happily ever after. Sometimes you win only enough to pay for the new car, sometimes you can only invite your SO to a fancy dinner.

This may have been the reasoning in the year 1709, but nowadays you have to consider something like cost of living, long-term contracts and ROI for the sponsoring and creation of more art and science. Entertainement, art and science is no longer a hobby for the aristocracy, its big business.

Information wants to be free, but artists and scientists also want to be fed.
Copyright is needed to protect the rights of an artist or scientist from "theft", but as with everything capitalism gets it's dirty hands on, greed corrupts it.
Please see http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1612656&cid=31787862 for further arguments.

They might make most of the money in the first 2-3 years after publication. But ...

First, lately there has been a lot of talk about the long tail and I grok the arguments for it, second, as the artist I want to have a copyright on my art for at least as long as I live.

My proposal of life+7 years with a more costly renewal every 7 years is based on two reasons: First as long as I life I want to reap the fruits of my talent. If I or other artists decide to put something in the public domain before my death, hey even better. But this decision is mine or theirs to make. That's the reason for life.
+7 years is to discourage somebody to just kill me and make an early and unearned buck. If somebody has to wait until my heirs decide to not pay the renewal fees, lets call them royalities, after 7 years, that would discourage at least the people who are after the quick and easy money.
7 years strikes me as a reasonable timespan, it contains the lucky number 7, and if I, as an successful artist, die my death will push the sales of my pieces of art into the sky and beyond.
My heirs should profit some from this unlucky occurence.

The amount of royalities to pay for a renewal has to grow, so that it outgrows the profit gained from having the copyright at sometime in the foreseeable future. There may be better models for this outgrowing, but have i to do all the thinking?

As for the transfer of copyright to companys, I would equal this with the death of an artist. Companys want to be persons, but they ain't. They should have not all of the same rights as natural persons. On the other hand they are more capable of marketing and selling a piece of art/product and should be able to make a bit of cash for all the money the invest into their sponsored artists.

So for a natural person copyright till death+7years and progessivly more expensive renewal royalities, for companys 7 years from the transferal of copyright and progessivly more expensive renewal royalities.

If the artists decides to transfer the copyright into the public domain earlier or per last will, hey it's their decision as a human being.

Sorry, but 7 years is too short. I have nothing against copyright for as long as the artists lives. He has to eat, pay rent and should have every right to earn the fruits of his labor. If it's a truly magnificient work of art or at least popular, he will make heaps of money with it, most of which his heirs will inherit.
But why should his heirs or even worse big media conglomerats have any right to something that was created 60 years ago? I sniff a little whiff of feudalism in this line of reasoning.

I can see the argument, that to market media nowadays costs a lot of money and therefore we need publishing companys and such. But to have a copyright term of life+75 years stinks of greed.
As long as the artist lives he should reap the fruits of his creativity, but if he is dead, the copyright should fall into the public domain.
For copyrights transferred to publishing companys I propose a progressivly higher cost for copyright. First 7 years are free, every new 7 years term costs 10% of profits gained by the work of art times the number of prior renewals.
So after 70 years the cost of copyright renewals will be 100% of profits gained, +/- creative accounting and it'll be not cost-efficient to renew the copyright. This will be a win-win situation for both sides, the company will reap enough money to regain the costs of marketing and the public will gain access to the work after a reasonable timeframe.
Companys want the rights of persons, than they should act like persons and die after 60-90 years.

It seems there may be a kernel of truth in this whole decriminalizing debate.
Look at f.e. statistics of cannabis use, in particular a comparison between the USA and the Netherlands. Where do you think the lifetime prevalence of marijuana use (ages 12+) is higher?

If you answered: "Netherlands of course, it's legal there", I'd like to refer you to http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/node/67 Point 8.

Usa 36,9% vs 17,0% in the Netherlands.
Maybe it's time to rethink some strategies to combat drug use. The current ones don't seem to work very well, at least from my point of view. But, alas, I'm no politician and therefore lobbyists don't pay me lots of cash to state their point of view.

Wrong argument.

First of all you are not part of the target audience. You won't pay, the sheep will.

Information must originate from somewhere and somebody has to pay for it.

Murdochs media imperium is big enough that it will not fall in 5 years. He can suffer from 2-3 years of lower income, his treasure chest holds enough cash. He will get ROI on this scheme and other media outlets will follow suit. ACTA and DMCA will of course help with this.
You may not be happy with this course of events, but unless you are Bill Gates and have enough cash to burn on providing the information and the opinions wanted by your target audience, what will you do, if all links to the information you need and want are behind this paywalls?

Lets iterate this hypothesis a bit.

It's 350$ a year if you wish to pay avery day anew, but it's 104$ if you pay every week.

The next step I would implement, will be 50$ if you pay once per month, followed up with 35$ if you pay once per year.
So if you subscribe for a year you get a rebate of 90%. Suddenly this scheme does not look so bad at all.

Both? Try all of them. Finally a modern space opera with thought provoking ideas. Warning: literal doorstopers.
Hey, Mr. Stross is also worth a read.