Quote:
Originally Posted by DrNefario
How is this putting the US "in harmony with the rest of the world" if they're not moving to life+70? What has 95 years got to do with anything? (Apart from being a panic reaction to the last time certain things were about to expire?)
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It was done to block anything from going into the US public domain. You, see, life +70 is meaningless with flat rate override. The flat rate override was put in when the US went to Berne life + 50 (in 1978). When the copyright override started to expire in 1998, another 20 years were added to the override and life +50 went to life + 70 as justification.
(Note the move to life +70 in Europe was strongly lobbied by the the US copyright holders before the US extended the US copyright. Nothing in the 1909 Berne agreement requires life + 70. . . . )
Because of the flat rate override, only one year (1922, because the extension bill didn't get passed at the end of the year, and got passed early the next year) has gone into the public domain in 39 + years. . .
The Mouse House successfully lobbied twice already for extensions, I can't believe they are about to stop now . . .