Individual authors and photographers have rights to their intellectual property during their lifetimes, and their heirs have rights for 70 years after the creator’s death, so any publication less than 125 years old has to be checked for its copyright status. The duration of copyright protection has increased steadily over the years; the life-plus-70-years standard was set by the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, which increased the 50-year limit established by the 1976 Copyright Act. Supporters of such legislation like to defend these increases with tales of starving writers and their impoverished descendants, but in reality the beneficiaries are more likely to be transnational publishing companies. And note that copyright laws serve a dual purpose. In addition to protecting the rights of authors so as to encourage the publication of new creative works, copyright is also supposed to place reasonable time limits on those rights so that outdated works may be incorporated into new creative efforts. Therefore, the extended copyright protection frustrates new creative endeavors such as including poetry and song lyrics on Internet sites.

* heir : 상속인 ** legislation: 법률, 입법