More US Copyright Bullsh*t

In 1998, the Congress of the United States allowed Disney to rewrite US copyright law in order to delay the entrance of a single work into the public domain[1]. Since then, there has been a freeze on copyrighted works entering the public domain, during which all works published in 1923 or later have remained under copyright. This will end on January 1st 2019, after which works will finally begin entering the public domain in the US 95 years after their date of publication[2].

95 years is an absurd duration that can't possibly benefit the deceased authors of copyrighted works. The notion that copyright law "protects[3] artists" is laughable. On the contrary, it artificially increases the value of works owned by large studios like Disney, of which so many copies have been sold that they are ubiquitous, while doing little for smaller artists whose works do not have enough copies in circulation to be easily obtained by means other than the author's preferred method of dissemination.

Things may soon get worse. The well-intentioned Music Modernization Act has been hijacked and combined with the CLASSICs act, and it may be combined further with other harmful bills[3]. This could result in effectively extending the duration of proprietary restrictions on some audio recordings in the United States to 144 years[4].

144 years is a long time. Almost exactly 144 years ago, Charles Ives was born. Ives is widely considered to be the first significant American composer. He was also a vocal critic of copyright restrictions and refused to copyright his works. It's unfortunate that Richard Stallman had not yet invented copyleft licensing. Had Ives been able to protect his work from exploitation with a Creative Commons share-alike license, it might not now be published, against his wishes and beliefs, under proprietary licenses. Remind me again how copyright protects artists?

Recordings from as early as the 1920s would be affected by the CLASSICs act, encompassing virtually all of the United States' musical heritage for which audio recordings exist. As an American musician, I do not feel "protected" by this at all, but betrayed by my government.

Of course, this is just one of many, and far from the worst, of the US government's daily betrayals of its citizens and the the human race. Corruption is hardly surprising in a nation where bribery of politicians by corporations not only tolerated, but legal[5].

tldr;
$ youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format vorbis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aSOr7Sqym4

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Mouse_Protection_Act
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/04/copywritten-so-dont-copy-me/557420/
[3] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Protection
[4] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/music-modernization-act-good-solution-songwriters-dont-combine-it-bad-copyright
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission