A solution to the unending copyright problem (Score 1)

The main problem with copyright is not so much that people are getting recognition for their work, that's good as far as I'm concerned. The problem with copyright is that, if you want to make serious money off of your work, you have to utilize your power to restrict others from editing and copying your work, which is what many artists do. Now, the Founding Fathers realized that, after the artist has made some money off of their work, the public's best interest is served if the work becomes freely copiable and editable. Hence, the "limited time" clause in the constitution. Unfortunately, the heirs of certain authors (Disney and others) have managed to convince the US government to extend the copyright to longer and longer "limited" times. This is exactly opposite of what it should be, because as time goes on and technology speeds things up, it becomes more and more in the public's best interest that books, software, etc. be freely copiable/editible sooner rather than later. Yet it would be unconstitutional for the copyright term to be shortened because it could be regarded "ex post facto". I feel a solution would be to simply, after a certain number of years, take away the authority of an author to restrict others from copying and editing a given work. Thus, if Windows 2005 were to go out, the copyright holder would still "own" it for 100 years or so, but not the ability to restrict others from copying and editing it. Another solution would be to limit the amount of money an author/CR holder can get off of royalties.