Audio Interview
Copyright protections were never supposed to last forever. Copyright was originally designed to protect creators long enough so that they could profit from their work, after which time that work would enter the public domain. However, changes to copyright law have made it so that copyright protections in the US generally last for 70 years after the creator’s death. Duke Law School Professor James Boyle runs the Center for the Study of the Public Domain. He tells Bob about all the works that would have entered the public domain this year, but didn’t.