Copyright and what I learned about it

I definitely did learn a lot about copryright. I learned that copyrighting things started back in 1790. At that time, a copyright was only good for 14 years. I also learned that a public domain can be many different things. One of the meanings is "materials that can be used without requesting permission," which means they are publicly available (for everyone). It is also "another term for national park." The last meaning is "materials that were published with taxpayer support."

Something that really interested me was how the amount of years for which a copyright is valid has changed. Copyrights can now be valid for either one of these two times: Either the author`s life + 70 years, or the date of publications + 95 years. Before, it used to be less, but due to the Sonny Bono Act, 20 more years were added to the preceding amount of time. This act was passed in 1998 and it is also commonly called the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. It all started because Disney was afraid because the copyright they owned on their most famous character Mickey Mouse was about to expire. They decided to fight to extend the copyright and at the end, they won. The copyright was extended for 20 more years, but this not only affected and extended teh copyright Disney had on Mickey Mouse, but it also affected and extended all the other copyrights. The librarian even told us that before this act was passed, many people were happy that many creative works would pass to the public domain, and therefore using them would be easier. After this act was passed, people had to wait 20 more years.

For the librarians this can seem unfair, but personnally, I agree with adding more years to copyright. I feel it is unfair to simply lose the full rights and commision that people can get from their creative works. I stand on this side (on the side of the owners of copyrights) because I feel that someday I will own a copyright on something I do and to think that my ownership of it will someday be lost is not a great feeling. At the same time, it will be a long time until the owners of copyrights lose their full ownership, but it still doesn`t feel too good.