Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
They not only have a right to, but a duty to, under the Berne Convention to which the US is a signatory.
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They may have the duty, but they may not have the power to restore a copyright that has lapsed (Governments, or parts of governments don't have rights, they have powers). According to the US Constitution, copyright serves a very specific purpose (to induce the creators of intellectual property to publish it, or in the case of patents, to make the knowledge available to others). Once a copyright is expired, it is difficult to see how restoring said copyright increases that motive, particularly since the authors of said works have been dead for years.
I know the Supreme Court has disagreed in the past, but to my mind, in the United States, there should be no way to change the terms of copyright on an existing work. If published under terms X, the copyright should expire under X as well, even if other copyright laws have since replaced the original law.
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Bill