U.S. Copyright Term Extension Proposal

According to the February 1 issue of _Daily Variety_, Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, plans to introduce a bill implementing a 20 year term extension for U.S. works.

This would change terms for pre-1977 works to 95 years, and post-1976 works to life plus 70, or 95 years for works for hire.

The Copyright Office had a hearing on this proposal in 1993, at which only proponents testified. To my knowledge the Register of Copyrights never forwarded a recommendation to Congress.

Has anyone heard any of the details of the current proposal? The proponents have at times also called for resurrection of the expired copyrights of public domain works, and having term extension be retroactive (i.e. resurrect copyrights in works for hire retroactively back to 1900).

David Pierce
mileston[_at_]access.digex.net Received on Thu Feb 02 1995 - 23:12:51 GMT