Extending the term of copyright on
public domain works is a terrible idea, as we learned with the Sonny Bono Copyright Act in 1998: the main effects of taking material out of the
public domain and putting it back in copyright was to enrich large publishing businesses at the
expense of scholarship, archiving, librarianship, education and access, while dooming
enormous chunks of our collective culture to be «orphan works,» with no discoverable owner, likely to have every known copy disappear or disintegrate before they re-entered the
public domain and could be reissued.
Show me a Green that actually gives up cars, washing machines, electric lights, computers, heated houses, and commercial goods made far away and transported at
enormous expense in energy to the stores where they purchased them and I'll show you a Green that has no voice because they have successfully marginalized themselves to where they can not even publicly argue for their
public stance.