I intended to mention this, but in some cases, Congress is taking things out of the public domain. Yep, items that were PD go back into copyright. Don’t ask me how that makes any sense for creative incentives, but SCOTUS upheld congress’ authority to do so:

http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/golan-v-holder/

Sad thing is Mickey Mouse is also a trademark of Disney. Copyright protection is superfluous, TM lasts forever already (as long as its maintained). The public domain really is dead, and we’re all worse off because of it.

I buy drm-free whenever possible, but it isn’t always possible. When I do buy DRMed content I make sure it is using a method I can easily crack and copy in to the format of my choice. This most often takes the form of AZW files turning in to Mobis. I do find the eInk Kindle to be the best reader for my needs, and the DRM is a trivial crack so I always have a backup of anything I buy. They might up the security and prevent me from cracking their books, but that would be the last one I bought. I don’t mind DRM on rentals, it’s not my property but only borrowed, but when I pay more for an eBook than I would for a paperback it had better not come with an expiration date. The only “pirated” music I own are the albums I bought from Sony, it was easier to torrent them than deal with trying to crack my copies. Piracy is also a sales tool. I recently downloaded 30 albums, all of the downloads were deleted within the week, but 16 of them came back as legitimate purchases. Do the 14 I chose not to buy mean more than the 16 I did? Does one listen rob the industry of 14 sales, or does t give them 16?

Any copyright length of more than a single digit is excess. For movies even more so, most of the profit is made in the first months. Unless there’s sequel in the making there’s no economical reason to keep it locked after that.

@ Dr. Azrael Tod:
Well not everything is available, but the selection is reasonable. I’ve got 10 thousand sci-fi and fantasy book pack from thepiratebay on my hdd right now. It’s not epub, but pdf is also acceptable. Obviously I will have hard time reading even a small portion of it, but still it amazes me that I can carry more books with me than I could read in a lifetime.

I think the problem with this lies not in Mickey Mouse and Star Wars. That are only the benefitors of this system. The Problem lies with small, less known books/movies/whatever.
There will allways be someone ready to find out if it’s currently ok to copy Star Wars or Mickey Mouse, you will allways find out who has the current rights at Lord of the Rings but who owns this nice little book you just found on the intarwebs? Who has the right to print new copies? Someone died 30-60 years ago… are there children? Did someone else inherit the rights?
Even works that are widely known for a century are affected by this. What is popular now doesn’t have to be in 20 years, 50 or even in a century.

Piracy might be part of a solution but here is the same problem because of different reasons. Just try to find an Epub/Mobi/TXT-File for one of the less known books you loved in your childhood. It’s more then 10 years old? Noone reprinted it? The Company releasing it has gone out of buissnes? Good luck finding a copy!