The nature of human creations and the marketplace could stand refinement. I have no problem with Disney and affiliates retaining rights to “Mickey Mouse” in perpetuity. Others ought to be allowed to make use of Mickey without asking for cash. I do have a problem with mathematicians charging a fee for use of their creations/formulas, but believe their published works ought to be subject to remuneration indefinitely.
What you call “grind to a halt” would make for a good fantasy. Stop whining and write a novel about it. Copyright law merely regulates ideas as they are brought to market. The onus of enforcement is a two way street. Walt won’t come to your home and sue if your lady sews up a Mickey Mouse pillow for your weary head and charges you $5.00 and a night out for the effort.
What I hear from the detractors of copyright law is a thin whine called “That’s not fair!” There isn’t a fiddle small enough to express my sympathy.
Do you take the same view on patents? Should all life-saving drugs be locked up in government-granted monopolies in perpetuity? Really?
As I asked, before how much extra should we all be paying for our cars for the perpetual royalties to the estate of Nikolaus Otto? How about Charles Goodyear? Gaston Planté?
Or do you have some argument that a fictional character is more worthy of being the subject of a perpetual government monopoly than the internal combustion engine, vulcanized rubber, or the lead-acid battery? If so why?
And how robust a notion of fair-use are you allowing in your notion of perpetual remuneration? If your regime were in place, would I have to pay the estate of William Butler Yeats for reusing the line “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” in a published work, or only if I quoted the whole poem “The Second Coming”?
And why do you have a problem with us mathematicians charging to use our discoveries? How are they different than a device that can be patented or a fictional character that can be copyrighted? Why exactly shouldn’t our “intellectual property” be subject to the same kind of protection? I put more creative effort into the development of the infinitesimal deformation theory for pasting diagrams of linear categories than old Walt put into “Steamboat Willie”. Why exactly do you think I should not be able to charge people to use the results in my two papers on the subject and prevent them from being used if they don’t pay, but Disney Corporation should be able to do the same for their cartoon mouse?