Quoting Jason White (jason@jasonjgw.net):
Les Kitchen <ljk@csse.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
Even if it wasn't there, the FTA would be unlikely to be the immediate reason. While the FTA shifted us from death of author plus 50 years to death plus 70 years, John Howard (bless his heart) didn't make it retroactive (as happened in some other countries, like Ireland -- possibly the U.S. too, but I'm not so sure about the retroactivity of their change).
Thank you for the excellent and helpful analysis.
I don't know how the U.S. copyright system works in this respect, except that it is retroactive, allegedly for the purpose of protecting what critics used to call "the mouse that ate the public domain".
Succinctly put. Yes, you've put your figurative thumb on the force behind copyright extension in the USA: that damned mouse. Every time 'Steamboat Willie' (1928, the first public appearance of Mickey Mouse[1]) was about to pass into the public domain (the first time in 1956), the US Congress mysteriously got motivated to extend copyright terms. The latest extension was via 1998's Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act aka the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, which extends the term to life of the author + 70 years, or 120 years since creation or 96 years since publication (whichever endpoint is earlier) for works of corporate authorship. Copyright coverage for works published prior to 1978 was increased by 20 years to a total of 96 years since publication. US copyright extensions have _not_ had retroactive effect: The Sonny Bono act did not remove any works from the public domain. The edge case of works created before 1978 but not published until recently is addressed in a special section of the Sonny Bono Act that gives them copyright through 2047. [1] The unofficial cartoon mascot of 1984's World Science Convention in Anaheim, less than a klick from Disneyland, was one 'Ricky Rat'. The people over at Mauschwitz were unhappy but couldn't actually do anything about it.