While that sounds a bit extreme, that is pretty much the result of the Supreme Court ruling last Wednesday on Eldred v. Ashcroft. I mentioned this story some time ago but held out hope that common sense would prevail. As Wired Magazine reports, “The 7-2 ruling (PDF) in Eldred v. Ashcroft gives Congress free reign to hand out copyright extensions as long as media companies are around to lobby for them – all while rejecting most arguments brought by the plaintiffs to the contrary.” This piece in Siliconvalley.com also lends some insight on the subject, and the accompanying image in this blog entry is a great, if now illegal, summary of the situation. I am disgusted that companies like Disney (one of the main, and most egregious, defendants) can now profit indefinitely from its work, much of which was based on public domain sources to begin with.
