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On January 15, the US Supreme Court refused to overturn a 1998 Congressional decision to extend previous copyright protection by twenty years.

Known as the Sony Bono Copyright Extension Act, or the "Mickey Mouse Act" for its strong backing by the Walt Disney Company, the law provides copyright protection for the length of an author's life, plus 70 years. The Supreme Court noted that Congress had acted within its jurisdiction and did not overstep its boundaries in enacting the law, which had been supported by industries with a vested interest in protecting their copyrighted properties—such as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Association of American Publishers (AAP).

The law had been opposed by a coalition of citizens' groups, including teachers and librarians, who contended that the new copyrights stifled rightful public use of older creations, including many that no longer had any commercial value. On January 16, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) weighed in on the issue with the following statement by President and CEO Gary Shapiro:

"We are disappointed the Court has decided to uphold the Constitutionality of the extension of copyrights. With this ruling, copyrights are now protected for up to a century. The Constitutional mandate that copyright terms be restricted to 'limited terms' becomes almost meaningless as Congress yielded to Hollywood's extension request.

"Certainly, creative work must be encouraged and original ideas protected. But this idea must be balanced with the need - and right - to promote broad public access to copyrighted works and to allow for technological innovation.

"It is simply unfair that companies who made their fortune taking works in the public domain and reformatting them for new technology are now preventing others from following the same business model. Congress took from the public and gave to Disney. And while most Justices recognized this was horrible public policy they also chose to find it constitutional. We call upon the Congress to revisit the extension and return reasonable limits to the copyright term."

One compromise proposal suggests that copyright owners may pay a renewable fee, such as $50 per year, to retain copyright, and that any work for which the fee has not been paid for three years in a row could enter the public domain. That would free up those works with little or no remaining commercial value. Whether Congress will consider this proposal isn't known at present.