[coffeevradar]

Copyright is fairly applied to Disney. There were many beneficiaries to its extension, large and small. In any case, it is a matter of law, just like earlier, shorter copyright protections were.

It's totally legitimate to favor shorter copyright, but essentially any duration is an arbitrary one. It strikes me as odd that you would be interested in applying the law fairly while also referring to the law as a perversion.

[matheusmoreira]

> There were many beneficiaries to its extension, large and small.

The public did not benefit in any way from its extension. Quite the opposite: every time the duration of copyright terms is extended, the public is robbed of its rights so that corporations which have already made billions off of their copyrighted works can make even more money. When was the last time some copyrighted work entered the public domain? Probably the early 20th century. When people think public domain, what comes to mind is renaissance art and classical music. The truth is everything created in the 80s and before should already be in the public domain and that's very generous, more than enough time for companies to get rich off of their creations.

The original social contract behind copyright was "we'll pretend your intellectual work is scarce for some time so you can profit and then it will enter the public domain". Works aren't entering the public domain because every time Mickey Mouse is about to become public property Disney spends millions lobbying the government in order to extend the copyright duration. Copyright is effectively infinite despite what the law says. So why should the public recognize copyright as legitimate to begin with?

[kenned3]

This! Disney has morphed copywrite without any input from the public. What sort of contract is valid if only one party changes the terms and the other never agreed to it?

[blotter_paper]

I'm not a fan of copyright law, so don't take this limited factual response as an attempt at a general refutation of your points.

>When was the last time some copyrighted work entered the public domain?

January 1st, 2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_in_public_domain

[RonanTheGrey]

So, things made about 100 years ago are finally making it into the public domain..

I don't know.. I mean yeah, but something strikes me as really wrong about that.

[alextheparrot]

Some would argue that the undefined duration does not match “limited times” and that the copyright is no longer “promoting useful arts”. While some of these questions have been answered in Disney’s favour in recent times, it is clear that the “matter of law” is anything but clear.

[cookiecaper]

This was adjudicated up to the Supreme Court: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2002/01-618

tl;dr: 7-2 as long as there is some type of time limitation, Congress is free to extend copyright terms.

[cthor]

Eldred vs Ashcroft held that the CTEA (Sony Bono act) was constitutional.

This is a good point worth bringing up, since the GP seems to imply it isn't with reference to the wording of the constitution's Copyright Clause.

However, it doesn't answer the moral question of whether congress should have passed that law, or whether congress should pass laws to change copyright term lengths to be shorter. That's not the role of the court.

[henrikschroder]

Cool, so why not set the limit to the heat-death of the universe and be done with it?

[cookiecaper]

> Cool, so why not set the limit to the heat-death of the universe and be done with it?

Presumably SCOTUS would say that an effectively-infinite timeline is not "limited" within the Constitutional definition of the word. Eldred v. Ashcroft basically tried to argue that continual decades-long extensions amounted to this, but the Court was not convinced.

[Dylan16807]

The supreme court agreeing on something is a solid piece of evidence that something is correct, but it's very far from ironclad. Especially when it's not unanimous.