Depends on where we want to go as a Society (Score 1)

I happen to believe that we need to find a balance between the incentives offered to artists and our progression as a society. The only way we move forward is by making advances each generation, this applies not only to technological advances but to cultural advances too. Our understanding of ourselves through our culture changes and is built on the advances made by those before us. If those advances are prevented from entering our common "tree of knowledge," it makes our progression as a species that much harder. As far as providing incentives to artists, I feel that there needs to be a time frame within which the artist or the assigns can attempt to make money with a work, but there's no right to make money and if it hasn't happened for a while, then it probably won't happen. My proposals are thus: 1. All works that are copyrighted must be registered -- no automatic copyright. There should be some nominal registration fee, such as $1. This allows people who want to use a work to find the creator or assign of that work. (It helps prevent the argument that if one can't find out who owns a work, then one can use it for free since they're not out anything because that person wouldn't know who to give the money to anyway). 2. Each year the re-registration fee goes up. I think the cost should be $2^(n-1) where n is the year of the registration starting at year 1. So, at the 14 years that the constitution discusses, the cost would be $8,192 which would be a pretty good cutoff for all but corporations. However, even corporate icons such as Mickey Mouse would be released in a generational time frame (at year 31, the cost is over a billion). This isn't that unfair considering Steamboat Willy ripped off Steamboat Bill.