Copyright Timeline
Since the Statute of Anne almost three hundred years ago, U.S. law has been revised to broaden the scope of copyright, to change the term of copyright protection, and to address new technologies. For several years, the U.S. has considered and acted on copyright reform. The Canadian government is considering copyright reform as well.
A timeline of copyright law in the U.S. Some web commenter recently called to revive the original Copyright Act of 1790 14 year copyright with potential 14 year renewal.
The Mouse Heads in Congress in 1998 passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act “retrospectively extended copyright protection of existing works by 20 years, from the life of the author plus 50 years (as mandated in the 1976 Copyright Act) to life of the author plus 70 years. The Act prospectively added 20 years of copyright protection to future works. For works made for hire, the term of protection was extended from 75 to 95 years, thus allowing major corporations such as Disney an additional 20 years of control over their works.”
So, copyright extends beyond most people’s creative careers and basically puts the corp in situation of monopoly.