It's worth noting the last copyright extension was in 1998, when few people had the means to easily, quickly, and losslessly duplicate books, music albums, and movies. Yes, one could copy a book, page-by-page, with a photocopier, one could copy a cassette tape or burn a CD-R in minutes, and one could even copy videos with a VCR.
But of those, only the CD-R was a lossless copy (ebooks hadn't entered the public consciousness yet, and DVD-R was brand-new), and all of them took minutes per copy.
(If, at this point, anyone feels compelled to point out that they had a DVD-R drive in 1998, or one of the early MP3 players (perhaps a Diamond Rio, or a MPman?) or that they were already collecting, reading, and sharing ebooks (both Project Gutenberg and pirated) in text formats, by all means do so. But understand that that any of those things, in 1998, marked you as belonging to a very small, tech-literate minority (if exactly the minority I expect to see on /.), and I'm talking about the majority of people.)
Since 1998, we've reached the point where almost everyone has devices capable of playing music, playing video, and reading ebooks from digital storage (whence they can be copied off to a friend's thumbdrive in seconds rather than minutes), they know how to use those capabilities, and they have, if not experience with, at least knowledge of various file-sharing networks that allow unlimited sharing for next to no effort. Along with the popularization of copying has come the popularization of copyright infringement lawsuits -- while I'm unaware of any strings of suits against individuals for copying videos with a VCR, there've been a number of such for users of various file-sharing networks. While, as a percentage, vanishingly few pirates are every actually sued, it's widespread enough to enter public awareness in a way the few cases in the VCR era never really did. As a result, copyright law was seen, in those days, as really being about a factory churning out knockoff VHSes or DVDs, not about the average guy taping a TV show or copying a rental movie now and again.
So in the past, I think the average voter didn't see themselves as having a stake in copyright law, and if they did, they were more likely to consider themselves have a stake on the industry side (maybe, one of these days, when they get around to it, they'll write the next Great American Novel!) than on the pro-copying side. There was dishearteningly little public opposition to the Mickey Mouse act of '98, but there was little public support, too. Today, I think there's a chance many voters will see themselves as having a stake, and firmly on the copying side.
So I hold out hope -- faint hope, to be sure -- that next time it comes up, copyright extension will be very unpopular with voters, perhaps enough to defeat it. Not to say that's likely, or even a real win if it does happen -- after all, unless/until we block (constitutionally or judicially) the whole idea of retroactive copyright extension, all we "win" is a couple of years' worth of works escaping to the public domain while they're gearing up for a bigger lobbying push, this time with more congressmen who aren't seeking re-election and so have nothing to fear from voters.
look for Disney to push for another copyright extension either right after midterm elections this year, or after the 2016 elections.
If I were them, I'd wait for 2016. Any increased uptake of streaming video and music services only helps them, because those services make copying difficult-to-impossible for the average guy. Given a couple years at current trends, the majority will be nearly back to where they were in 1998, and won't feel they have a stake in copyright law. The minority who do have an objection, of course, will be larger than before, but still too small to matter.
