gdn: Did you know this? I didn’t. It is one of main causes of the income gap.
"...Copyright terms began in 1790 at 14 years and were expanded in 1831 to 28 years (largely at the behest, I might add, of none other than Noah Webster—you can guess why he wanted longer copyright terms). Copyright then expanded in scope to movies, radio and so forth but it remained at 28 years until 1976 when it was dramatically lengthened to life of the author plus 50 years. (Did we so lack for artistic output prior to 1976 that we needed such an expansion?) It was then expanded again in 1998 to life of the author plus 70 years!"
https://www.quora.com/session/Alex-Tabarrok/1
"...Copyright terms began in 1790 at 14 years and were expanded in 1831 to 28 years (largely at the behest, I might add, of none other than Noah Webster—you can guess why he wanted longer copyright terms). Copyright then expanded in scope to movies, radio and so forth but it remained at 28 years until 1976 when it was dramatically lengthened to life of the author plus 50 years. (Did we so lack for artistic output prior to 1976 that we needed such an expansion?) It was then expanded again in 1998 to life of the author plus 70 years!"
https://www.quora.com/session/Alex-Tabarrok/1