How has copyright law changed?

Answer 1

The copyright laws have changed a little with the times, in order to address advances in technology. The most notable recent update was the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, by which the US came more in line with other UN nations in the World Intellectual Property Organization. More recently, the FAIR USE Act of 2007 sought to expand the rights of teachers in using materials protected by Digital Rights Management.

Links:

http://www.copyright.gov

http://www.wipo.int

Answer 2

The "balance of power" has slowly shifted towards the rights holder and away from the general public. Terms of protection have risen from 17 years (with the option to renew) to now an automatic 70 years past the death of the author/creator.

Answer 3

The easiest change to explain is the elimination of formalities: while many countries required creators to formally register their works in order to enjoy copyright protection, once they sign on to the Berne Convention, they must automatically protect works of sufficient creativity as soon as they are fixed in a tangible medium. Some countries (such as the US) do still allow and encourage registration, while in others there is no mechanism for registration at all. This makes it more difficult for users to identify and local the rightsholder for materials they wish to license, but it takes a lot of the burden off of creators: less paperwork and fewer fees means more time to create!

Beyond this, copyright laws have struggled to keep abreast of technology. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was an attempt to update American copyright law to reflect the 20 years of advancement that had occurred since the last overhaul of the law: DVDs, mp3s...even the internet itself had been developed in that time. Unfortunately, much of the law remained fundamentally the same, with many new ideas being shoehorned into the rule sets for old technology: to a significant extent, the laws for streaming audio are based on the laws written for player pianos in 1919.

Answer 4

The exclusive rights of copyright only benefit creators. Because the intent of copyright law was to benefit everyone by encouraging creativity, additions to the law described as "balancing features" sought to even that out. In the US, these limitations, defenses, and exceptions make up the bulk of the law, and give slightly more rights to users at the expense of making copyright frustratingly convoluted.

The most popular balancing feature is fair use, which specifically tries to allow free speech within the bounds of copyright by allowing certain unlicensed uses "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research." Intepretations of the fair use clause are widely varied, and each case that makes it all the way to the Supreme Court brings with it decades of opposing decisions.