Fast moving field does make sense in terms of copyright because the knowledge is recorded in documents which are then copyrighted. E.g. research papers.
> If I write a really popular book, I don't want Hollywood to make it into a movie without compensating me just because they waited a few years
I genuinely don't understand this. Even at a decade copyright, pretty much anybody who was going to buy the book and read it has already done so. It costs you virtually nothing in sales, and society benefits from the resulting movie.
Your goal is to deprive everyone of having a movie, because someone who isn't you is going to make some money that was never going to you anyways? Your goals for copyright appear to be a net negative to the system that enforces copyright, which begs the question why should the system offer protection at all?
> Even at a decade copyright, pretty much anybody who was going to buy the book and read it has already done so. It costs you virtually nothing in sales, and society benefits from the resulting movie.
If the movie can be made then the book can be printed and sold by any publisher, under the current system. It creates a race to the bottom on the price of the book as soon as the copyright duration is done. Perhaps extending "fair use" stuff could allow one and not the other.
That race to the bottom is a feature, not a bug. It allows poor people to engage with culture. That's the tradeoff here. At some point copyright is protecting a tiny amount of profits for the author in exchange for locking people out of access.
Copyright is supposed to be a societal benefit, or there's little reason for society to spend money on enforcing it. That's where we currently are, and I think why there's such a strong reaction to copyright currently. We pay to protect the works and then we pay again to buy them. They become free when they're so culturally irrelevant that nobody wants them even for free. The costs of enforcement are socialized and the benefits are privatized.
At some point, copyright is going to have to provide more back to society or society will get tired of paying to enforce it.
Copywrite expiring in 20 years doesn't mean access is democratized. Publishers would likely keep the price the same, but instead is the author getting a cut, they just take everything.
Besides. The public isn't owed the fruits of my labor for free.
I honestly suspect fairly little would change. The US operates with a 20 year copyright for nearly 200 years, these long copyrights are actually far newer.
Also, you are not owed a monopoly on arrangement of words enforced by the public. There are plenty of other places to spend tax dollars.
Who do you think pays for prosecutors, lawyers, jails, and investigators going after pirating sites? DMCA claims are worth less than the paper they're printed on if not for the threat of all that.
> If I write a really popular book, I don't want Hollywood to make it into a movie without compensating me just because they waited a few years
I genuinely don't understand this. Even at a decade copyright, pretty much anybody who was going to buy the book and read it has already done so. It costs you virtually nothing in sales, and society benefits from the resulting movie.
Your goal is to deprive everyone of having a movie, because someone who isn't you is going to make some money that was never going to you anyways? Your goals for copyright appear to be a net negative to the system that enforces copyright, which begs the question why should the system offer protection at all?