Re:The deception of “buying” digital movies
by NaturalPhallacy on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @04:51PM
(#33086629)
You stopped just short of the worst one:
>The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act – also known as the Copyright Term Extension Act, Sonny Bono Act, or (derisively) the Mickey Mouse Protection Act[1] – extended copyright terms in the United States in 1998. It is one of several acts extending the terms of copyrights.[2]
As your chart shows ever since the first Copyright Act in the US, there has been a major revision every 40-70 years, typically to update for things that have changed since the previous Act such as new technology.
As far as I've been able to tell Disney has nothing to do with creating the 1976 Act, which was the first time their copyright term was extended. The 1976 was created largely to address the massive changes in technology and international trade since 1909.
As part of that there was wide consensus that the US needed to make its copyright law more like the rest of the world, to pave the way for the US joining the Berne Convention. The change in terms came as part of that, making US copyright terms match what nearly everyone else had.