[Upd-discuss] Question regarding European Copyright law and U.S. law

[Dean Kay]

The argument is not at all fallacious and was made in all sincerity, 
Richard... and, here's why:

In 1993 the European Union (EU) issued a Directive that harmonized the 
term of copyright protection across the EU.  The chosen term was that of 
Germany - 70 years after the death of the author.

Under the terms of the Berne Convention, the extended term was made 
available to foreign copyright owners on the basis of RECIPROCITY... 
that is, if the term of copyright in a country outside the EU was less 
than the term within the EU, copyrights created in the outside country 
could not partake of the extended term afforded copyrights created 
within the EU.

As entertainment products (and their copyrights) created in the United 
States provide a vast majority of the entertainment consumed in the EU, 
and throughout the rest of the world, for that matter, it would have 
been extremely unfair to US creators and copyright owners if they had 
have been prevented from enjoying the same protections their 
counterparts in the EU were granted. 

The 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act was necessary to 
address the reciprocity issue.


Richard Stallman wrote:

>     One issue kept coming up in my research... the extension was
>     necessary to put us (the U.S.) in line with Europe's copyright
>     laws.
>
>This argument was widely stated, but it is completely fallacious.  The
>US does not need to have the same copyright laws as Europe or any
>other place.  The publishers invented this fictitious need as an
>excuse for the change they wanted.
>
>     Can someone explain what this means? In what way(s) did it put us
>     in line? Was it simply the length of the extension?
>
>Yes, exactly.
>
>But this law did not in fact make the US law the same as European law.
>It extended the copyright term by 20 years for both author-copyright
>works and works made for hire.
>
>Before the law, in one of those two cases (I forget which one) the
>European copyright term was 20 years longer than the US copyright term.  In
>the other case, Europe and the US had the same copyright term.
>
>Since the law extended US copyright in both of these cases, it made
>Europe and the US equal in the case where they were different, and
>different in the case where they were equal.  This shows that the
>claim of a need for "harmony" was insincere.
>
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