[Summary]
A major blow for digital libraries was the amendment to the 1976 U.S.
Copyright Act signed on 27 October 1998, each legislation being been
more restrictive than the previous one. As explained in July 1999 by
Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg: "Nothing will expire for
another 20 years. We used to have to wait 75 years. Now it is 95 years.
And it was 28 years (+ a possible 28-year extension, only on request)
before that, and 14 years (+ a possible 14-year extension) before that.
So, as you can see, this is a serious degrading of the public domain,
as a matter of continuing policy." The copyright went from an average
of 30 years in 1909 to an average of 95 years in 1998, with an
extension of 65 years. Only a book published before 1923 could now be
considered for sure as belonging to the public domain in the U.S. The
copyright legislation became more restrictive too in the European
Union.
***
A major blow for digital libraries was the amendment to the 1976 U.S.
Copyright Act signed on 27 October 1998, followed by a more restrictive
legislation too in the European Union.
Each legislation was more restrictive than the previous one. As
explained in July 1999 by Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg:
"Nothing will expire for another 20 years. We used to have to wait 75
years. Now it is 95 years. And it was 28 years (+ a possible 28-year
extension, only on request) before that, and 14 years (+ a possible 14-
year extension) before that. So, as you can see, this is a serious
degrading of the public domain, as a matter of continuing policy. (…)
No one has said more against copyright extensions than I have, but
Hollywood and the big publishers have seen to it that our Congress
won't even mention it in public. The kind of copyright debate going on
is totally impractical. It is run by and for the 'Landed Gentry of the
Information Age.' 'Information Age'? For whom?"
John Mark Ockerbloom, founder of The Online Books Page, wrote in August
1999: "I think it is important for people on the web to understand that
copyright is a social contract that is designed for the public good --
where the public includes both authors and readers. This means that
authors should have the right to exclusive use of their creative works
for limited times, as is expressed in current copyright law. But it
also means that their readers have the right to copy and reuse the work
at will once copyright expires. In the U.S. now, there are various
efforts to take rights away from readers, by restricting fair use,
lengthening copyright terms (even with some proposals to make them
perpetual) and extending intellectual property to cover facts separate
from creative works (such as found in the 'database copyright'
proposals).“
The shrinking of public domain also affected the European Union, where
copyright laws went from "author's life + 50 years" to "author's life +
70 years", following pressure from content owners who successfully
lobbied for "harmonization" of national copyright laws as a response to
"globalization of the market".
To regulate the copyright of digital editions in the wake of the
relevant WIPO international treaties signed in 1996, the Digital
Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) was ratified in October 1998 in the
United States, and the European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD) was
ratified in May 2001 by the European Commission. Each country in the
European Union was requested to draft and pass its own legislation
within a given time frame. In France, DADVSI (Droit d'Auteur et Droits
Voisins dans la Société de l'Information) passed in August 2006, with
the general public being not so happy about it.