An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

I don't condone or endorse breaking any laws.

That said, trademark laws like life of the author + 95 years are absolutely absurd. The ONLY reason to have any law prohibiting unlicensed copying of intangible property is to incentivize the creation of intangible property. The reasoning being that if you don't allow people to exclude 3rd party copying, then the primary party will assumedly not receive compensation for their creation and they'll never create.

Even in the case where the above is assumed true, the length of time that a protection should be afforded should be no more than the length of time necessary to ensure that creators create.

There are approximately zero people who decide they'll create something if they're protected for 95 years after their death but won't if it's 94 years. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same for 1 year past death.

For that matter, this argument extends to other criminal penalties, but that's a whole other subject.

New rule: you get to keep your belongings for 20 years and that's it. Then they are taken away. Every dollar you made twenty or more years ago, every asset you acquired, gone.

That oughtta be enough to incentivize people to work and build their wealth.

Anything more than that is unnecessary.

Intellectual property does not belong to you. The entire concept of "owning" intellectual property is a very recent thing.

So how about we go back to how it used to be and just remove this entire concept.

You can own things you can't own an idea.

Your copyrighted work just has to be an original expression, not derived from someone else's work. It doesn't have to contain original ideas.

Patents are for ideas. Patents do in fact expire far faster than copyrights in the USA. The main problem with patents is patent trolling in the area of software patents.

It would be a lot easier to defend copyright if it expired quicker.

I used to be against copyright, but with the rise of scum like Altman, I'm going all in. Copyright should last forever, as long as the ownership is handed down through inheritance or other transactions and not assigned to the public domain.