[aoanla]

Back in 2011, the UK Government commissioned an "independent review" of copyright etc (The Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property").

It broadly agrees with your ideas - at least in terms of the fact that copyright is far too long (the report thinks 20 to 30 years would be long enough, possibly in two phases with a renewal needed in between) but notes that the UK is bound by international law to keep copyright longer than that.

It also recommends on weakening copyright with more exemptions...

...and in the case of patent law, making it more expensive to renew patents to encourage people to not just renew by default, and not allowing any additional things to be patented (cf US software patents).

It's also very grumpy about the way copyright law just happened whenever a wealthy industry asked for it

[dredmorbius]

Excellent reference and apparently the first time it's been cited at all on HN.