In v0.5.0 coming soon you will be able to set your own period. So, you could increase the default 6,000 blocks to something much higher.
That is incorrect. The big change is that files will automatically re-upload, meaning that they'll stay online so long as you continue running the daemon. For v0.5.0, files will go up for 4 weeks by default and renew when there are 2 weeks left. The numbers are small so we can see how the hosts + renters behave on a short timescale in a live environment before switching to bigger file contracts. For v1.0, I think the upload time will be 6 months (26 weeks), renewing when there are 12 weeks remaining. We will probably add customizability to those numbers, but those customizations are not ready for v0.5.0.
In that case you should update your v0.5.0 API documentation. In the section
/renter/upload/{siapath} [POST] it states:
'duration' is the number of blocks for which the file will be available. If the renew parameter is true, this parameter will be ignored.
Source:
https://github.com/NebulousLabs/Sia/blob/master/doc/API.mdMy interpretation was that 'duration' therefore is customizable to any number of blocks.