"It’s a very simple procedure: 50 years after you published something, you’d have to file a copyright maintenance fee, say a dollar a year. If you didn’t pay the fee then the work would pass to the public domain, but if you did pay the fee then the copyright would continue. We know from past registration systems that 98 percent of copyright owners would not bother to renew, even for a dollar, because they don't care. So Disney would pay for Mickey Mouse for as long as they wanted, but 98 percent of the stuff would pass to the public domain."