[holmesworcester]

The existence of the Internet does make existing copyright law much more destructive and limiting than ever intended.

The creators of copyright law never imagined a world where everyone could have a free library of a lifetime of books in their pocket, and where copyright would eventually be extended to make this impossible.

This creates urgency to change the law (e.g. back to the original 12 year copyright terms), challenge the law in the courts as archive.org has been doing, or disobey it on principle, as the operators of Anna's archive, Z-library, and Scihub are doing, heroically and at great personal risk.

[ribosometronome]

>This creates urgency to change the law (e.g. back to the original 12 year copyright terms)

What was the reasoning for lengthening the terms in the first place? It's not clear to me why works from 1780 would be relatively trivial to modern and thus only merit potentially up to 20-something years of protection while they now may need ... 80ish? I'd assume production of essentially any work would be more of a PITA and riskier in 1780.

[JKCalhoun]

> What was the reasoning for lengthening the terms in the first place?

I've heard Disney and Mickey Mouse cited. But perhaps that's a different issue.

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

[23B1]

Yes, I am replying to the parent comment. It is rational for publishers to want to protect their business models.