This to me is the right answer: have an intellectual property tax which goes up every year. Disney can pay to keep Mickey locked up but all of the less popular IP shifts the calculation from “keep it, we might use it some day” to a more balanced calculation.
The other thing I’d like to add is some kind of requirement that works be available (e.g. it should cost a lot more if they want to hide it in a vault) but that would need care to avoid publishers screwing creators if there’s a dispute, as is not uncommon - you wouldn’t want the threat of putting something in the public domain to be used to force the creator to agree to unfavorable terms. Maybe something like all assignment contracts are unconditionally voided without compensation if the company chooses not to make an item available for sale/license at standard rates for more than n days in a 5 year period?
I like your idea a lot, but I'll admit I don't know what a standardized rate or one-size-fits-all solution looks like. Or, I have different expectations for HBO than I do for an individual artist producing works as a hobby.
I also wonder about the implications for the copyright status of a "limited edition" version of a work. I'm not sure how that would play out.
Yeah, there would definitely need to be some thresholds for things like lifetime revenue and use (e.g. you wouldn’t want a service trying to play silly games pretending that they didn’t collect revenue for a movie because it’s a complimentary to their members with some other purchase).
Limited editions are interesting, especially if they’re not something easily compared to a mainstream release. Maybe you’d need an appeal process where someone could get a special exception by the Copyright office under certain circumstances.
The other thing I’d like to add is some kind of requirement that works be available (e.g. it should cost a lot more if they want to hide it in a vault) but that would need care to avoid publishers screwing creators if there’s a dispute, as is not uncommon - you wouldn’t want the threat of putting something in the public domain to be used to force the creator to agree to unfavorable terms. Maybe something like all assignment contracts are unconditionally voided without compensation if the company chooses not to make an item available for sale/license at standard rates for more than n days in a 5 year period?