Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
Well, the whole lifetime movement for copyright was pushed by a wealthy author (Victor Hugo) who was peeved because he thought that copyright was his personal right. So Disney is simply following in his footsteps. Long copyright is purely about protecting commercial profits of a small number of works. The vast majority of authors get the vast majority of sells in a fairly short time period.
Of course, as I've pointed out before, books really doesn't move the copyright needle much. It's mostly driven by movies these days. It's not exactly a surprise that the US joined the Berne convention about the time that box office outside the US became an important market for film makers.
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Actually when the early sound pictures were looking at copyright expiration. 1929 to 1976 was 47 years, the expiration would be in another 9 years. As a matter of fact, it covered silents that were not already in PD, even though there wasn't much of a market for them. (1921 + 56 = 1977)
Hollywood was into foreign markets from the 1930's. Look at how you started to have latin american themed movies (musicals especially) in 1940, once the european markets were closed off with WWII.