What's So Eminent About Public Domain?

Tim Lee Or consider the newly formed Property Rights Alliance (a project of Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform) which sponsored a panel at last month's State Policy Network meeting in which lobbyists from the movie and recording industries shared the podium with grassroots activists fighting eminent domain abuse. The Alliance's founding press release lamented that "recent Supreme Court decisions gutting physical and intellectual property rights have left little choice but to unify and organize." ...The Eldred decision is a good example. Until 1909, an author could receive copyright protection for no more than 56 years, after which the work would fall into the public domain. But thanks to industry lobbying, Congress extended the terms in 1976, and again in 1998. As a result, no copyrights have fallen into the public domain since the 1970s unless their owners chose not to renew them. There's every reason to think Congress will grant another extension around 2018, when the current terms begin to expire. Despite the Constitutional requirement that copyrights be "for limited times," Congress has effectively made them perpetual, one extension at a time. ...By lumping together the very real threat of the government taking people's land with an imaginary threat of IP anarchists abolishing intellectual property, the copyright industry and its allies hope to portray themselves as defenders of traditional property rights. http://www.reason.com/hod/tl103105.shtml