A period of mourning.

These are normal things for us to go through when we lose someone or something dear to us.

Today, we lost a beautiful friend, the Public Domain. The Supreme Court of the United States has decided 7-2 that the retroactive extension of copyrights in the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act is constitutional. In laymans terms, this means that Congress is free to extend and re-extend the copyrights of anything currently under copyright for as long as they want. If the way the current lobbying has gone continues, we will see copyright extended for an indefinite period.

Why is this a bad thing? This is a bad thing for many reasons:

1. Nothing ever enters the public domain. The founding fathers intended for copyrights to be established for limited times, after which, it enters the public domain. Copyrights were recently extended to death of the author + 70 years (Corporations = date of publication + 90 years) Nothing created during our lifetimes will probably ever reach the public domain unless specifically put there.
2. Monopolies The founding fathers put limited copyrights into the constitution so that companies could not gain monopolies on their intellectual property. This was prevalent with printing guilds and such throught the middle ages, using their power as publishers to hold power over others. (We're still seeing this today with groups like the MPAA and RIAA)
3. Degredation As time passes, books, tapes, records, and other media degrade. Every day, we lose reels of film to the effects of old age. Because this material is not in the public domain, it is impossible for preservationists to save this material without having to pay large sums of money for licenses to use the material. So, each and every day, our culture is degrading around us, as things are lost permanently to the hands of time that could otherwise be saved.

There's a better explanation on Timothy Eldred's website. The big thing to do now: In 2017 and 2018, when copyright terms are about to expire again, be sure that we the people prevent large media conglomorates from using their puppet congress to extend copyright terms again.