This law effectively froze the advancement date of the public domain in the United States for works covered by the older fixed term copyright rules.

Under this Act, works made in 1923 or afterwards that were still protected by copyright in 1998 would not enter the public domain until January 1, 2019, or later.

Mickey Mouse specifically, having first appeared in 1928 in Steamboat Willie, entered the public domain in 2024,[5] with other works following later in accordance with the product's date.

[a] [b] In the Eldred v. Ashcroft decision, the Supreme Court noted that these extensions "were all temporary placeholders subsumed into the systemic changes effected by the 1976 Act.

House members sympathetic to restaurant and bar owners, who were upset over ASCAP and BMI licensing practices, almost derailed the Act.

[7] Both houses of the United States Congress passed the act as Public Law 105-298 with a voice vote.

[8][9] President Bill Clinton signed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 on October 27, 1998.

Mary Bono, speaking on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, said: Actually, Sonny wanted the term of copyright protection to last forever.

[16]Other parties that lobbied in favor of the Bono Act were Time Warner, Universal, Viacom, ASCAP, the major professional sports leagues (NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB), and the family of slain singer Selena Quintanilla-Pérez.

They also claim that copyrighted works are an important source of income to the US[18][19] and that media such as VHS, DVD, cable and satellite have increased the value and commercial life of movies and television series.

[18] Proponents contend that Congress has the power to pass whatever copyright term it wants because the language "To promote the progress of science and useful arts" in the United States Constitution is not a substantive limitation on the powers of Congress, leaving the sole restriction that copyrights must only last for "limited times".

However, had the act been in place in the 1960s, it is unlikely that Andy Warhol would have been able to sell or even exhibit any of his work, since it all incorporated previously copyrighted material.

Suggesting that quality copies of public domain works are not widely available, they argue that one reason for a lack of availability may be due to publishers' reluctance to publish a work that is in the public domain for fear that they will not be able to recoup their investment or earn enough profit.

Borrowing ideas and such are common in film, TV and music even with copyrighted works (see scènes à faire, idea-expression divide and stock character).

In Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises, however, the court explained how a copyright "respects and adequately safeguards the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.

"[23] Critics of the CTEA argue that it was never the original intention for copyright protection to be extended in the United States.

Attorney Jenny L. Dixon mentions that "the United States has always viewed copyright primarily as a vehicle for achieving social benefit based on the belief that encouragement of individual effort by personal gain is the best way to advance the public welfare;"[24] however, "the U.S. does not consider copyright as a 'natural right.

The extension bills represent a fundamental departure from the United States philosophy that intellectual property legislation serve a public purpose.

Thus there is little economic incentive in extending the terms of copyrights except for the few owners of franchises that are wildly successful, such as Disney.

More directly, they see two successive terms of approximately 20 years each (the Copyright Act of 1976 and the Bono Act) as the beginning of a "slippery slope" toward a perpetual copyright term that nullifies the intended effect and violates the spirit of the "for limited times" language of the United States Constitution, Article I, section 8, clause 8.

[33] Seventeen prominent economists and libertarians, including Nobel Prize laureates (George Akerlof, Kenneth Arrow, James Buchanan, Ronald Coase, and Milton Friedman), submitted an amicus brief opposing the bill when it was challenged in court.

"[23] The plaintiffs in Eldred v. Reno believed that "the CTEA failed to sustain the intermediate level of scrutiny test afforded by the First Amendment because the government did not have an 'important' interest to justify withholding speech.

[37] The Bono Act is thus perceived to add an instability to commerce and investment, areas which have a better legal theoretical basis than intellectual property, whose theory is of quite recent development and is often criticized as being a corporate chimera.

However, the Framers of the United States Constitution evidently thought that unnecessary, instead restricting the goal of copyright to merely "promot[ing] the progress of science and useful arts".

2589 provides a very generous windfall to the entertainment industry by extending the term of copyright for an additional 20 years.

This amendment was over details of allowing music from radio and television broadcasts in small businesses to be played without licensing fees.

[50] Publishers and librarians, among others, brought a lawsuit, Eldred v. Ashcroft, to obtain an injunction on enforcement of the act.

Sarah Jeong of The Verge criticized the bill for obviously violating international agreements and the Fifth Amendment protections against eminent domain, as an attempt to punish Disney for opposing Florida House Bill 1557, and because it is unlikely to pass in a Congress where Democrats control both houses.