[bryanrasmussen]

most European countries have some variation of the French model discussed below as opposed to the English/American model.

This is the reason why, I believe, that European countries has had no problem at all signing up for longer copyright because it fits in with our conception that the purpose of copyright is to protect the rights of the creator.

This was normalized by Berne, but let us suppose we got a new Berne convention and the U.S said hey long copyright does not help support the promotion of science and the arts etc. and I don't think that would go over that well, because shortening the period of protection does not fit well with the EU conception of what the purpose of copyright is for.

Hence the reason lots of arguments on here where people say I think it should be 25 years probably won't fly because it seems unlikely people in power are going to want to overthrow the international order on that point.

[pjc50]

> the U.S said hey long copyright does not help support the promotion of science and the arts etc

The US has been a big driver of extending copyright terms on behalf of US media corporations such as Disney. It became very apparent that whenever Mickey Mouse would come out of copyright, Disney would get a change in the law.

Most recently when it was about to expire this didn't happen, possibly as a result of the spat between Disney and Florida Republicans.

[bryanrasmussen]

I agree my hypothetical is a long shot, but it is mainly just to illustrate that even if the U.S took this hypothetical road and decided to argue for cutting copyright back to something like 20 years that people on HN often seem to think is the way to go, it is unlikely that European countries would find that acceptable - which means that probably it would get dropped because it would be a pretty big issue if in Europe it was 70 years and in US it was 20.