As anyone who’s interested in a free culture knows, copyright law has been getting more and more restrictive over the past 100 years or so. When an author published a book one hundred years ago, she enjoyed the exclusive right to reproduce her work and distribute it for a maximum of 42 years. Less, if she did not jump through all the red-tape hoops of renewing copyright after the initial 14 years, and again after 28. The copyright acts of 1831 and 1909 amended copyright law, extending it – including for works already published and still under copyright – from 28 years prior to 1831 to a maximum of 42 and then 56 years. This trend of extending the protection of copyright has been going on ever since, with the latest being the copyright act of 1998, which extended the duration of copyright to 95 years.
So copyright has been getting increasingly extended, and while 200 years ago you would have had monopoly on your work for a maximum of 28 years, today it’s four times that, and encompassing more types of intellectual property. But I would like to argue that over the past 100 years alone, copyright has become over eight times as restrictive. How? Because I don’t think measuring the length of copyright in years is of as much meaning as measuring it in man-years, and the population is growing constantly. continue reading »
