I think, if your work is popular enough to cross the "some company cares enough to buy the exclusive adaptation rights, but *not* enough to actually bother making an adaptation" threshold, it makes sense that you'd like the sound of a legal limit to how long companies can screw with your work that way.
For creators like me, who are way under that threshold...the most likely way *my* work would get exploited is "somebody scrapes the files and reposts them on their own site, with ads/behind a paywall/on merchandise sales, and I never see a cent of the profits." There's no bulletproof way to stop this stuff, but if you file a DMCA claim, at least some platforms respect it! (I've filed them for Ebay and OpenSea, for instance.)
If the work isn't under copyright, though, DMCA stops applying. So a universal copyright term of 2-3 decades kinda sounds like it would make my work more exploitable, not less.
IANAL, that's just an intuitive reaction! Would be interesting if anyone's done more rigorous research on how this stuff plays out.
Re: Your links are THE BEST
For creators like me, who are way under that threshold...the most likely way *my* work would get exploited is "somebody scrapes the files and reposts them on their own site, with ads/behind a paywall/on merchandise sales, and I never see a cent of the profits." There's no bulletproof way to stop this stuff, but if you file a DMCA claim, at least some platforms respect it! (I've filed them for Ebay and OpenSea, for instance.)
If the work isn't under copyright, though, DMCA stops applying. So a universal copyright term of 2-3 decades kinda sounds like it would make my work more exploitable, not less.
IANAL, that's just an intuitive reaction! Would be interesting if anyone's done more rigorous research on how this stuff plays out.