Comment

Big Brother Amazon? Not Really

135
Randall Gross7/20/2009 2:51:29 pm PDT

re: #125 SixDegrees

Copyright law in the US is a mess - to put it mildly. It was totally muddled by the Millenium Copyright Act, or whatever it’s called, which was written with enormous input from media lobbying groups. Basically, copyrights are now pretty much forever; a corporate entity can keep updating copyrights they hold for decades. There may be a limit of a century or so; the original goal was to keep the old definition - copyrights were active for the lifetime of the work’s creator plus 20(?) years - and make “lifetime” applicable to “the existence of the corporate entity holding the copyright.” That didn’t quite fly, but the length is now enormously extended.

There are also a number of bizarre irregularities that arise with older works, as some works copyrighted under older implementations got grandfathered in, others had already entered the public domain, and what not. Being a copyright lawyer these days is an exercise in frustration and futility.

Patents are simple. 20 years worth of protection from the date they’re granted, with a few relatively minor exceptions.

Yes, the Mickey Mafia put the largest muscle into this effort