In article <of9cf2baa6.7e1a8e24-on87257aa6.00637e69-86257aa6.0064a...@us.ibm.com>, Steve Thompson wrote:
> On 10/29/2012 10:26 AM, Steve Comstock wrote: >> On 10/29/2012 8:23 AM, scott wrote: >> >>> Ummm. There are copyright laws, ya' know. >> >> >> Do they not expire after 25 years? > > Because of the "Mickey Mouse" [Disney] laws (yes, this is what they are > referred to), copyright is not for a set number of years to be renewed by > the owner (US IP law up to about 1964 as I recall), but runs until some > number of years after the death of the original creator. > > This is because the owner of the Mickey Mouse copyrights (along with a few > others) pushed the US Congress for a change to the copyright laws. They > have been modified at least twice since 1964, if my memory serves me > correctly. > > At one point, the extension past demise was based on whether or not the > creator was well known (Ok, get a bunch of attorneys together and get them > to define that term). So it was something like 10 years for a non-well > known author, and 25 years for a well known author. > > The recent change is causing some to question if what the US Congress did > is actually a violation of the US Constitution in this area, as things > were intended to go into the public domain after a/an [reasonable] amount > of time. That is, a copyright was not to be "inperpetuity". There was a 2002 Supreme Court case on that, Eldred v Ashcroft; the Court held that as long as Congress specified a specific term for copyrights, the laws were Constitutional, even if they regularly extended that term. http://www.copyright.gov/pr/eldred.html Just a week ago, there was an interesting development, as the US House Republicans first published and then recalled a document urging an overhaul of US copyright law. A copy of that paper is available at: http://publicknowledge.org/files/withdrawn_RSC_Copyright_reform_brief.pdf -- Randy Hudson ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
