Copyright was never meant to give perpetual rights, which is what your scheme would do (as it does now). So might as well not change the current system, because the conclusion is the same.
The final arbiter was never "does it have commercial value still?" until today. That's a purely modern perspective pushed by companies like Disney, because of course it is. That's all they care about. We don't have to care about that. In fact, I'd suggest it's completely immoral to accept that framing when we look at how important public domain has historically been to our culture.
How many copyrights are worth half a billion dollars to register from 50-60 years? Presumably zero are worth registering for $50B to protect from 60-70 years.
> was never meant to give perpetual rights, which is what your scheme would do
Pretty quickly the cost to renew exceeds the amount of money in the world.
This scheme tosses the few powerful creators a small bone while shortening duration of all copyrights.
In addition to generating revenue from these large creators, and shortening their total term of protection... it also diminishes their power by creating a vibrant public domain with a whole lot of contemporaneous works in it.
The final arbiter was never "does it have commercial value still?" until today. That's a purely modern perspective pushed by companies like Disney, because of course it is. That's all they care about. We don't have to care about that. In fact, I'd suggest it's completely immoral to accept that framing when we look at how important public domain has historically been to our culture.