[danite]

How else did we get our current extreme copyright lengths? Were regular people advocating for this? Or was it for wealthy corporations and their shareholders? Did anyone responsible for the Great Recession face any legal consequences for destroying our economy and putting people out of their homes? Did people go to jail?

Call it hyperbole if you want, but it's the reality we're living in.

[baddox]

And is it a coincidence that copyrights have been extended to coincide with Disney’s major properties being scheduled to move into the public domain?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

[slg]

Like a lot of things in politics, it is a question of enthusiasm and motivation. There might not be a single individual person in this country in which reducing copyright protection is their most important issue (and if there is, I think that person has crazy priorities), but strengthening copyright is probably the single most important issue for Disney and other long-established media companies. Having a large group of people who are mildly in favor of something is much less likely to yield political change compared to a small group of people who feel incredibly strongly about that issue. This is the whole reason behind niche lobbying groups ranging from the NRA to the EFF and why those groups are able to have such a large impact on politics relative to their size.

[tzs]

There has been one copyright extension that can reasonably blamed on Disney lobbying.

There was one other that also affected Disney's copyright terms, but I can't find any evidence that Disney did any lobbying for that one, and even if they did it wouldn't have made a difference because that one had near universal support anyway because it was part of a major rewrite of US copyright law that did the most of the heavy lifting to make it feasible for the US to join the Berne Convention.