US Copyright Office found AI companies breach copyright. Its boss was fired

Lifetime for human copyright, 20 years for corporate copyright. That’s the golden zone.

Zero (0) years for corporate copyright, zero (0) years for human copyright is the golden zone in my book.

Why?

Because the concept of owning an idea is really gross. Copyright means I can’t write about whatever I want in my own home even if I never distribute it or no one ever sees it. I’m breaking the law by privately writing Harry Potter fanfic in my journal or whatever. Copyright is supposed to be about encouraging intangibles, and the reality is that it only massively stifles it

Copyright doesn’t protect ideas. It protects expression of those ideas.

Consider how many books exist on how to care for trees. Each one of them has similar ideas, but the way those ideas are expressed differ. Copyright protects the content of the book; it doesn’t protect the ideas of how to care for trees.

Disney has a copyright over Moana. I would argue Moana is an idea in the sense that most people think of as ideas. Moana isn't tangle, it's not a physical good. It's not a plate on my table. It only exists in our heads. If I made a Moana comic book, with an entirely original storyline and original art and it was all drawn in my own style and not using 3D assets similar to their movies, that is violating copyright. Moana is an idea and there are a million ways to express the established character Moana, and Moana itself is an idea built on a million things that Disney doesn't have any rights to - history, culture, tropes, etc.

I understand what you're saying but the way you're framing it isn't what I really have a problem with. I still don't agree with the idea that I can't make my own physical copies of Harry Potters books, identical word for word. I think people can choose to buy the physical books from the original publisher because they want to support them or like the idea that it's the "true" physical copy. And I'm going to push back on that a million times less than the concept of things like Moana comic books. But still, it's infringing copyright for me to make Moana comic books in my own home, in private, and never showing them to anyone. And that's ridiculous.

In the world you’re proposing, you would also not be able to make word-for-word copies of Harry Potter books, because Harry Potter wouldn’t exist.

why not? people write fiction all the time and put it on the internet for free. in fact, i'd say there's significantly more unpaid fiction writing in the world than paid.