Over the past 50 years, the copyright monopolists have gotten almost everything they asked for in expansions of copyright:



1) The copyright act of 1976, which greatly expanded U.S. copyright’s scope and duration both.
2) The elimination of the renewal requirement in the early 1990s.
3) A levy on all blank digital audio tapes.
4) An open-ended anti-bootlegging provision forbidding trade in unauthorized recordings of public musical and dramatic performances.
5) The Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, which extended pre-1978 copyright from 75 years to a whopping 95 years from publication.
6) The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which added additional barriers, in the form of its “device” and “circumvention” provisions, to the public’s use of digital works.

Full Story at Mockingbird’s Imitations

Technorati Tags: Audio Home Recording Act, Copyright, Copyright Term Extension Act, Digital Millennium Copyright Act

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