Is another conversation on copyright imminent?

The week before we were assigned to read this book, I read that Mickey Mouse is scheduled to become public domain in 2024, and that during the years that follow, many other classic Disney copyrights will expire as well. This both astonished and delighted me, and it was a fact that I had in mind as I began to read Lessig’s book. When Lessig began the book with a discussion of Steamboat Willy, I made the connection instantly, and it was an idea I kept returning to as I read. What had initially began as a piece of trivia started to make me wonder if, when that time rolls around, we might see a fresh wave of copyright cases. Certainly, I cannot foresee the Disney corporation relinquishing the copyrights of its perpetually lucrative cultural and media icons without a fight. Given the changes that have occurred in American and global politics in general since Eldred v. Ashcroft in 1998, what might this impending conversation around the future of copyright look like?

Throughout this class so far we have scene the topic of computers and writing turn again and again to boundaries, to the definition of boundaries, the shifting of boundaries, the transgression of boundaries. Issues in computers and writing, as well as issues in copyright, exist at the threshold of boundaries between the public and the private, owned and the free, and the personal and the political. The place we see this negotiation of boundaries in popular discourse often surrounds the law, the making of new laws and public opinions of legal cases. It seems that some larger, both legal and popular, discussions over the nature of creative ownership in a digital era are impending.