26 Sep
2013
26 Sep
'13
11:17 a.m.
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".