This would destroy the largest community driven around art: furries. It would also, in the process, destroy independent publishing in general, for hire artists, small businesses, and only really end up entrenching more the establishment by introducing more thing that must be maintained.

Your fee structure turns my $20 shitpost profile pic commission into a several hundred dollar affair. It also provides zero of the protections that currently used de facto copyright gives.

Let me give you a simple example of how your system fucks over a small independent artist, such as your typical Etsy sticker seller:

Let's say I'm an artist who makes profit off selling stickers on Etsy, but not really enough to give up my day job. I sell stickers for $5 each at a $1.50/ea profit for shy of $150/yr in profits across 20 or so designs. Under the current system, I should register my designs under copyright system, but I'm granted de facto copyright under the law for most cases where someone copies my design whole cloth and making a profit from it. If I register my designs, I gain several additional, useful protections, all for the low low price of $0. I now have to do nothing in order to retain those.

Better: I don't have to reveal my identity, a feature that may be useful in situations where the kinds of products I hock are considered in some way unacceptable (porn, or content the producer would prefer under a pen name).

Under your suggested system, that small Etsy seller I describe now has their name and details in a public ledger (not great for sex workers, photographers who may be the target of hostile nations, contrarian writers, etc.) Then, the renewal fees become a bear. After eight years of meager profits paying for their beer tabs, the 20 designs that the Etsy seller hocks will put them on the hook for at least $2,000, likely even more.

What you've described is a basic regressive tax. I've even gotten a fantastic little way around your system:

All my IP is legally owned by a shell company, owned by me, who licenses my company, also owned by me, for $25/yr, the ability to use that copyrighted work. I take all the profits from that and assign all related copyright of such profits to the shell company. Now the shell company literally exists with no other assets than its licensing revenue and and IP, which can be written off as a loss in the long run.

The shell company runs at a net loss over time and I pocket 100% of the profits.

This is actually done today already and is why you have copyright holdings companies that exist entirely to be bureaucracy management for the system, and are the ones you see suing the shit out of teenagers pirating a copy of Aladdin so their cousins have something to watch while Uncle Joe beats his wife.

How would I fix copyright?

1. Ban logo copyright. Most logos are already simple enough to be considered public domain but actually drop the entire logo purpose. Conversely, allow them to be trademarked and service marked.

2. Place heavy fines and revocation of privilege on false copyright infringement claims. One of the worst parts of our copyright system as it stands is the DMCA. While useful at its core, a lack of actual repercussions for its improper usage and SLAPP-like usage to harm the public good.

DMCA strikes are used to take down material which is not actually the copyright of the filer in more cases than not. For instance, DMCA strikes take down content related to making perfectly legitimate backups of movies and other home media, commentary on that material, and otherwise perfectly legal content that is not under the copyright of the DMCA claimsnt but the claimant would rather not people know about.

Currently, the only zing on the DMCA is "under perjury of law" that the claim is accurate. This is the legal equivalent of a pinky promise and a wink. It looks scary but it's absolutely the case that the DMCA gets abused as a SLAPP mechanism. When does your ability to file a DMCA complaint get revoked? Never.

Read through Chilling Effects' DMCA logs. They're fascinating. Also go read TorrentFreak on occasion for their commentary on DMCA takedowns, such as this gem where someone asked Google to take down... Localhost: https://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-firm-asks-google-to-blo...

3. Designate what is a long term and what isn't in copyright land.

I have an idea that I've kicked around for over a decade now about how to handle effectively abandoned properties and IP. It revolves around Gabe Newell's commentary on piracy: piracy is a response to a lack of availability in the digital age. There will come a point after which it is impossible to purchase a legitimate, perpetual license to something such as a book, movie, etc. At that point, all legitimate copies are on the second hand market. No revenue can be reasonably expected from that thing by the original seller. How can the original seller claim damages if they no longer offer a legitimate way to acquire the item?

Once this point occurs, once no legitimate mechanism for getting a copy of something exists, especially for durable goods (such as books, but not for things like stickers), when does it become abandoned? My take is 10 years. Once a purely digital copyright work is impossible to get legitimate for 10 years, it becomes abandoned: nonprofit duplication is legal, but for-profit duplication is not. After being abandoned for 30 years, the work is released to the public domain.

There's some exceptions: art has a weird place in the digital world. A fine line is drawn over what is archival and what isn't.

4. Destroy estate ownership of copyright extension. No more "the author died 50 years ago but the estate has the copyright into the next century" shit. Author died? 10 years for anything not abandoned.

5. Establishment of cultural copyright ownership/destruction of copyright on cultural heritage. Allow the LoC and other organizations to induct copyright works into a historic register of cultural touchstones. These items are considered long lived multigenerational items which should be placed into the public domain outside their usual timeline. Works over 25-30 years at minimum.

6. Fair use for incidental but otherwise prominent use of a copyright work during performance and its subsequent recording and replay.

This is 100% targeted at music and other content in twitch streams, YouTube vlog channels, and more.

Passing by a stall playing top40, having music in the background during an artist's stream should not affect their ability to continue. Broadening fair use is Essential.