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I could seemingly get behind a much shorter copyright term. However, won't the enforcement measures needed to protect those new works be just as complex, ineffective or invasive as they are for 70 year copyrights? Enforcing copyrighted works, no matter how long or short the period, would require much the same overreaching action, right?

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Because many "pirates", especially the more competent ones, are motivated in part by the sheer immorality of the copyright extensions (or so many have claimed here on HN and a few other places I frequent). In many ways, copyright enforcement is in a similar place to the enforcement of Prohibition at the end of the 1920s, where otherwise law-abiding citizens willingly broke what they considered bad law.

The commercial success of DRM-free music on iTunes, Amazon MP3, Magnatune, etc. and DRM-free games in the Humble Bundle would seem to contradict this point.

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