Copyright was originally a very limited thing, both in terms of the rights it conferred and the time frame in which it was active. The UK was the first country of which I am aware to enact copyright law, specifically the Statute of Anne in 1710. This law gave authors the exclusive right to print and reprint their works for a period of fourteen years, optionally renewable for another fourteen should they so desire it (and still be alive to request it). The principle of this copyright act, ostensibly at least, was to encourage learned men to write and publish books, and thereby promote learning. The USA enacted substantially similar law in 1790.

Copyright has grown over the intervening years in both the length of its term and the number of rights conferred to the owner. Copyright now lasts fifty to seventy years (depending on the juristdiction) beyond the death of the author, and the rights granted are much more comprehensive than simple printing and reprinting. Granted, I think that some of the extensions in scope make sense. One shouldn't be able to bypass copyright simply by putting the same work in a new medium, but substantially unaltered. What I really want to question is the time frame for copyright.

Thanks to advancing technology, the process of getting anything published has become simpler and simpler over time. If I want to record something and have ten thousand CDs of it pressed, I can probably turn the job around in under two weeks. And that's just me as a private citizen. The actual composition of the work I intend to record will probably take much longer, but getting to press is a trivial matter. Further, the market for printed and recorded matter is huge relative to the earliest days of copyright because technology has made printing so quick and cheap. Almost the entire population is literate, and most of them have some kind of device for playing back audio or video recordings.

So why have copyright terms become longer? Fourteen years now is a very long time relative to fourteen years when copyright was first invented. Consider the sheer quantity of books and CDs that are created and sold in a fourteen year period now. A contemporary author has a much greater earning potential in the first fourteen years of publication than an author back in the early days of copyright.

What is the justification for extending copyright terms? So far as I can tell, copyright terms should be getting shorter with advancing technology, not longer.