> Before people cheer too much, surprisingly works can retroactively be snatched back from the public domain and go back into copyrighted state.
The United States is decidedly not going to extend copyright terms. The US only very reluctantly pulled works out of the public domain after it joined the Berne Convention in 1989. The reason ''Metropolis'' was in the public domain was because it failed to comply with renewal formalities, which are prohibited by Berne. Essentially, other countries threatened trade deals if the US made terms dependent on formalities for non-US works. So the law was changed and copyrights were restored.
As someone who works in the field (and who isn't a fan of the URAA), I can tell you that isn't going to happen again.
The United States is decidedly not going to extend copyright terms. The US only very reluctantly pulled works out of the public domain after it joined the Berne Convention in 1989. The reason ''Metropolis'' was in the public domain was because it failed to comply with renewal formalities, which are prohibited by Berne. Essentially, other countries threatened trade deals if the US made terms dependent on formalities for non-US works. So the law was changed and copyrights were restored.
As someone who works in the field (and who isn't a fan of the URAA), I can tell you that isn't going to happen again.