Why is it that Nintendo still has the rights to works they released over 20 years ago even though they've already turned a profit several times over? Why do they get to sell them to people over and over again?
They're supposed to be public domain. Websites hosting copies of these 40 year old games is supposed to be completely legal. Nintendo should not be able to DMCA anything out of existence.
That sounds right, and the Constitution does seem to say that, but the Sonny Bono Copyright Act, which extended the copyright protections for old, already-existing works, was found to be constitutional, and so I must conclude that you are somehow mistaken.
"Mistaken" is a weird word here, probably because we do this thing where we think of law as being etched in stone. It's not. It's 100% fluid all the time, but it's hard to see because it's slow.
Disney and Sonny Bono hired some lawyers to ramrod some dumb crap through. It happens. Let's see if we can fix it.
We did see. It was the famed Eldred v. Ashcroft case. Lead counsel before the Supreme Court was Lawrence Lessig, darling of the Open Source movement. In a 7-2 ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that, so long as the time limit for copyright was in some way limited, the length of time, even if lengthened after the fact, was permissible. Justice Stephens wrote an excellent dissent, but being only one of two, was official Wrong.
Ironically, that case might, at the same time, be the one who brings down the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions.
The standard set by SCOTUS was, apart from what you've already said, that a time extension was permissible as long as the "traditional contours of copyright" were not altered. One of them was explicitly called out, fair use.
The Court also explicitly mentioned that for a regulation to survive constitutional scrutiny in regards to copyright, it must not supersede, nullify, or even "disturb" the exercise of fair use.
This set the precedent that fair use is constitutionally required, not only a generous grant by Congress.
Copyright was meant to be "time limited".
Why is it that Nintendo still has the rights to works they released over 20 years ago even though they've already turned a profit several times over? Why do they get to sell them to people over and over again?