Comment by debugnik
> IMO any change to copyright law should not be applied retroactively.
Careful, if we were to shorten copyright, not doing so retroactively would give an economic advantage to franchises already published over those that would get published later. As if the current big studios needed any further advantages over newcomers.
It seems like it would make it more palatable to the existing franchises if their precious existing copyrights were not shortened. ("We paid billions of dollars under the assumption that we'd be able to milk this IP for 35 more years!") But anyway copyrights aren't going to get shorter in the near future.