“Why Mickey 1998 Copyright Extension Probably Won’t Happen Again: Copyrights from the 1920s Will Start Expiring next Year If Congress Doesn’t Act.”, 2018-01-08 (; backlinks):
On January 1, 2019, every book, film, and song published in 1923 will fall out of copyright protection—something that hasn’t happened in 40 years. At least, that’s what will happen if Congress doesn’t retroactively change copyright law to prevent it—as Congress has done two previous times. Until the 1970s, copyright terms only lasted for 56 years. But Congress retroactively extended the term of older works to 75 years in 1976. Then on October 27, 1998—just weeks before works from 1923 were scheduled to fall into the public domain—President Bill Clinton signed legislation retroactively extending the term of older works to 95 years, locking up works published in 1923 or later for another 20 years.
Will Congress do the same thing again this year? To find out, we talked to groups on both sides of the nation’s copyright debate—to digital rights advocates at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge and to industry groups like the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America. To our surprise, there seemed to be universal agreement that another copyright extension was unlikely to be on the agenda this year. “We are not aware of any such efforts, and it’s not something we are pursuing”, an RIAA spokesman told us when we asked about legislation to retroactively extend copyright terms. “While copyright term has been a long-standing topic of conversation in policy circles, we are not aware of any legislative proposals to address the issue”, the MPAA told us…“I haven’t seen any evidence that Big Content companies plan to push for another term extension”, Nazer added. “This is an election year, so if they wanted to get a big ticket like that through Congress, you would expect to see them laying the groundwork with lobbying and op-eds.”
…The politics of copyright have changed dramatically…The rise of the Internet has totally changed the political landscape on copyright issues. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is much larger than it was in 1998. Other groups, including Public Knowledge, didn’t even exist 20 years ago. Internet companies—especially Google—have become powerful opponents of expanding copyright protections…The protest against SOPA “was a big show of force”, says Meredith Rose, a lawyer at Public Knowledge. The protest showed that “the public really cares about this stuff.” The defeat of SOPA was so complete that it has essentially ended efforts by copyright interests to expand copyright protection via legislation. Prior to SOPA, Congress would regularly pass bills ratcheting up copyright protections (like the 2008 PRO-IP Act, which beefed up anti-piracy efforts). Since 2012, copyright has been a legislative stalemate, with neither side passing substantial legislation.