40 years ago, giant entertainment companies embarked on a slow-moving act of arson. The fuel for this arson was #copyright #TermExtension (making copyrights last longer), including *retrospective* copyright term extensions that took works out of the #PublicDomain and put them back into copyright for decades. Vast swathes of culture became off-limits, pseudo-property with absentee landlords, with much of it crumbling into dust.

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