Copyright laws, like patent laws, provide the creator of intellectual property protection from competition for a limited period. Without this protection competition from copycat competitors would drive down the price of the work to its reproduction cost and prevent the author from realizing a return on the time and effort devoted to its creation. The time of copyright protection is limited for a reason. It is designed to be sufficiently long to provide a reasonable return on creativity, but not so long as to create a long-term monopoly. After the copyright expires the work passes into the public domain where it can be copied and distributed without paying royalties. Thus, you can download the original works of William Shakespeare from the Internet for free. More recent works like The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and copyrighted in 1923 would now be free were it not for this Act.

So what prompted Congress to extend copyright time limits and why the distinction between works created before and after 1978? Probably not pressure from the heirs of F. Scott Fitzgerald. The big beneficiaries of the Act are movie studios like Disney and large publishing conglomerates like AOL Time Warner who have valuable intellectual property rights. It is not coincidental that the original Mickey Mouse, created in 1928, would have reverted to the public domain next year. The new Act extends Mickey’s copyright protection until 2023. There is no question that Walt Disney and his heirs have been more than fully compensated for the creative effort that went into Mickey Mouse. This legislation is a thinly veiled gift to Disney, not an attempt by congress to stimulate additional creativity.