Call to Revert US Copyright Term to 28 Years Flawed, AEI Fellow Says

A recent call to scale back the U.S.' current copyright term, which grants copyright protection for a work for the life of the author plus 70 years, “would cause cascading detrimental effects” and misrepresent “the intentions of the founders and framers” of U.S. law, said Tom Sydnor, visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute's Center for Internet, Communications and Technology, in a Tuesday blog post. Sydnor responded to Amherst College Librarian Bryn Geffert, who criticized the current U.S. copyright term in an Inside Higher Ed opinion piece. Geffert urged the U.S. to restore the 28-year copyright term envisioned in the 1790 Copyright Act because that would honor the founders' intent and reduce what he views as an excessively long copyright term. A reduction in the U.S. copyright term length “unwittingly urges the US to trigger global financial crises by withdrawing from the World Trade Organization (WTO) and all other multilateral copyright treaties that it has entered into during the last 107 years,” Sydnor said. “The disadvantages of global chaos and larger US trade deficits would outweigh any domestic benefits of a shorter copyright term.” The reduction proposal would also “thwart” the intent of the drafters of the act to “provide a life-of-the-author-plus term of protection,” Sydnor said. U.S. “citizens no longer die at an average age of 39, as they did in 1790.” Geffert didn't comment.