From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]> Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2016 00:58:07 -0600 You seem to be implying that publishers were responsible for the extension of copyright. In fact, the Association of American Publishers did not support the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. In popular mythology it is blamed on Disney, but the larger driving force was copyright harmonization of US law with European law, which had been extended under the European Directive and would have put US authors at a disadvantage had Congress not matched that extension. The Act was also upheld by a unanimous decision of the Supreme Court. Sandy Thatcher From: Eric Elmore <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2016 17:20:49 +0000 Does it really though? Or has copyright become just another tool for the for-profit publishing industry to extract ever increasing fees from the academic market? Copyright started out as a limited right to authors, but how long does it extend now? 150 years? Longer? That doesn't sound like a right a human author would realistically need. It's not an especially large leap of logic to see copyright as having been subverted and warped, only benefitting the large corporations who wield it like a bludgeon against the very academics who do the actual research, and writing, and editing of the materials they "publish". ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Eric Elmore | Electronic Resources Coordinator | The University of Texas at San Antonio | One UTSA Circle | San Antonio, TX. 78249-0671 | [log in to unmask] | ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++