I think that for the person who suggested the idea, this would be considered success--creative products that aren't being actively used should revert to the commons.

But as a comment in a different thread suggested, I do think that we'd want something like this to be accompanied by a shift in how we think about copyright.

Right now, copyright is used for two broad reasons: 1) preventing unauthorized "commercial" use, and 2) preventing piracy.

Use 1 is broadly good but flawed in the current system. But use 2 is culture-killing and creativity-surpressing with current copyright lengths, a good example of which being the loss of what.cd.

The more I think about it, the more I think we need to separate the two uses, so that creative works are in the public domain by default after a short time for the purposes of private use and archival projects, but corporations are prohibited from using creative works they haven't paid for for commercial purposes on a much longer timescale.

On balance, copyright seems to restrict the public and benefit corporations, and ideally that would be inverted.

what's the downside here?

Like.what. I hear this a lot but not much way of real examples.

You hold on to.copyright of.a song you sang when you were 8 and isnt making any money? So what ?