SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
boing boing - Happy Public Domain Day: here are the works that copyright extension stole from you in 2015 and Center for the Study of the Public Domain
Current US law extends copyright for 70 years after the date of the author’s death, and corporate “works-for-hire” are copyrighted for 95 years after publication. But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years—an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years. Under those laws, works published in 1958 would enter the public domain on January 1, 2015, where they would be “free as the air to common use.” Under current copyright law, we’ll have to wait until 2054.1 And no published works will enter our public domain until 2019. The laws in other countries are different—thousands of works are entering the public domain in Canada and the EU on January 1.
(Score: 2, Informative) by multisync on Thursday January 01 2015, @08:34PM
They are not the same issue.
In this case, theft is an appropriate term, as works that should have entered the Public Domain under the agreement in place when they first received free, publicly-funded enforcement of their exclusive limited copyright will not be. The copyright holders received all of the benefits of the agreement they entered in to, then successfully lobbied to have the rules changed after the fact so they would not have to hold up their end of the bargain.
The fact that the public has been deprived of what is rightfully theirs - namely works create prior in 1958 - amounts to theft.
Infringing copyright amounts to distribution without a license to do so, and should be treated and described as such.