As 2019 drew nearer, the copyright resistance who had fought over this grew nervous, then...elated. Was Congress actually going to heed the evidence of a decades-long failed experiment and decline to extend copyright again?
https://archive.org/details/MarybethPetersFormerUsRegisterOfCopyrightsOnTermsBeingTooLong
I had pitched email debates with comrades over this. #MichaelSHart, visionary founder of @gutenberg_org, was *certain* it wouldn't happen (he didn't live to see it).
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Marybeth Peters, at a Nov 2, 2005 event at the University of North Carolina Law School, explains that copyright terms have gotten too long.
I had long arguments with comrades about this - people like @gutenberg_org founder #MichaelSHart (RIP) were fatalistically *certain* the public domain would never come back.
But they were wrong. The public outrage over copyright term extensions came too late to stave off the slow-motion arson of the 1976 and 1998 Acts, but it was sufficient to keep a third extension away from the USA.
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Cory Doctorow