The decision has come down in Eldred v. Ashcroft, and the Supremes have ruled with Congress. The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which prevented any copyrights from expiring through 2018, has been left in force. As a result, creative works remain under control for a period equal to an author’s life plus 70 years or, in the case of works for hire, a 95 year term. Some note Congress has extended the term of existing copyrights 11 times in the last 40 years, so there is little reason to expect that any copyrights will ever expire in the future.

Until 1976, the average copyright term in the United States was 32.2 years (the maximum term was 56 years, but 85% failed to renew their copyright after 28 years). In the last forty years, that term has tripled — every single work copyrighted today will remain copyrighted for an average of at least 90 years. — Doc’s diagnosis

That’s bad news, and it’s bad law. As much as “content owners” would have us believe that intellectual “property” is just like tangible property, it simply isn’t. If I take your chair, you have no chair. If I sing your song, you’re deprived of nothing — except perhaps license fees, which come not from anything you’ve done, but from society’s agreement to respect your work. That bargain should provide at least some benefit for the rest of us, rather than just give assignees the right to charge for public performances of “Happy Birthday” for 150 years.

As always, Larry Lessig is on the case with an excellent proposal to balance copyright owners’ needs with those of the public. It’s highly worthy of discussion — and implementation.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 20th, 2003 at 10:44 pm and is filed under Law & Politics.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.