Bob Oakley writes:
>
> I have wondered, however, how we got to such a long duration for
>copyright protection. At life plus for 50 (or 70 in the future), the
>duration goes well beyond what most authors probably need as an
>incentive to create.
I suspect a large part of the reason why we have kept extending the copyright term in the past, and may well continue to do so, is that extension proposals rarely generate much opposition. There may not seem to be a good affirmative reason to extend the copyright term, but nobody raises a compelling reason to refuse to extend the term, and the propsal goes through.
One explanation people usually offer for extending copyright duration to a term of life-plus-50 is that we were required to do so to join the Berne convention. That doesn't, of course, explain the current duration of copyrights in works made for hire (75 years from publication or 100 years from creation). Nor does it account for the effort to extend all current copyrights 20 further years, to a term of life-plus-70 (or 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation for works made for hire). Indeed, *none* of the arguments I've heard in favor of the proposed 20 year extension seem to support increasing the duration of copyright in works made for hire. But the proposal has no natural opposition. An extra twenty years tacked on to an already longer than we can imagine term hardly seems worth mounting a big fight over.
I was initially very surprised that the current extension proposal generated so little controversy, but when I tried to identify an industry group with a substantial financial incentive in exploiting works that are 75 (or 100) years old rather than 95 (or 120) years old, I couldn't come up with one.
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