I can agree with the sentiment, but he lost me when he used the fakespeak word "incentivize."
Actually, all we need to do is to offer copyright protection to the creator of a work for the life of the creator. No corporate copyrights for creative works. When the creator dies, the work goes into the public domain. For groups, this extends to when the final member of the group dies. Record companies shouldn't own copyrights for music they didn't write; the composer alone should own the rights to his creation. Yes, the recording companies produced the records and often helped an artist improve the effectiveness of his or her work. However, the company didn't create the work, so they shouldn't "own" it. An artist should benefit from his work for his lifetime. A company shouldn't be able to dictate what the creator of a work can do with that work, nor should that company be able to dictate what can be done with a piece after the creator has died.
I know the legal situation is more complicated than this, but something needs to be done to stop behavior like that of the RIAA.
Or a compromise, since I think (a) depriving creators of rights after five years is extreme, and (b) a company should be able to make back a return on its investment:
- Copyright held by the creator for life plus 20 years (that's mostly to assure that heirs of a creator are not suddenly left penniless upon the creator's demise);
- Copyright held by any assignee other than the creator, be it corporation or what have you, for twenty years from the date of assignment.
Now all we have to do is find a few elected officials who have the notion to work for the people who elected them instead of for the interests of Disney...