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How up-to-date are you when it comes to copyright law? Copyright laws in the U.S. have been around since 1790, but two 20th-century revisions, coupled with the internet's fostering of a read/write culture, have had a significant impact on the use, reuse, and distribution of digital media and content in this century. They've also helped initiate a new category of copyright protection. It's called Creative Commons.
CHANGES IN U.S. COPYRIGHT LAW
The Copyright Act of 1976 eliminated the prior requirement that authors register their work with the Copyright Office. Now, your every doodle, napkin sketch, and home video has copyright protection the minute you finish your creation. That's change number one.
Second, the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998, also known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, lengthened copyright terms in the United States by 20 years. According to the Library of Congress, in its "Copyright Basics" publication, work that was "created (fixed in tangible form for the first time) on or after January 1, 1978, is automatically protected from the moment of its creation and is ordinarily given a term enduring for the author's life plus an additional 70 years after the author's death." For works made for hire - in other words, corporate works - and "for anonymous and pseudonymous works (unless the author's identity is revealed in Copyright Office records), the duration of copyright will be 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter" (www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf). These two changes have had, and will continue to have, a significant impact on the availability of content created during the 20th and 21st centuries.
How so? Works made in or after 1923 and still under copyright in 1998 "will not enter the public domain until 20 19 or afterward (depending on the date of the product) unless the owner of the copyright releases them into the public domain prior to that or if the copyright gets extended again." Furthermore, works "created before January 1, 1978 but not published or registered for copyright until recently may remain protected until 2047" (www.copyright.gov/ circs/circ01.pdf). Consequently, much of this content-text, books, magazines, pictures, films, music, audio, and video - cannot enter into the public domain until well into the 21st century.
LOCKING AWAY...