We're at an interesting point in the development of U.S. copyright law, now that AI is throwing a wrench into things. The Copyright Office takes the opinion that AI-generated works are not copyrightable. The U.S. does not have "sweat of the brow" protection, so the fact that an artist put in a lot of work (e.g., "hundreds of iterative prompts," etc.) isn't enough to make something copyrightable. The work has to have creativity, not hard work behind it. On the other hand, the courts only require the tiniest amount of creativity, so I expect that eventually AI-generated stuff will be recognized as eligible for copyright protection--or we'll have an interesting change/clarification to copyright requirements. Or maybe Congress will weigh in, who knows?

As an aside, I'm back commenting on /. for the first time in something like 12 years. It's interesting to see that my last comment was on copyright, too. Back then I was a programmer and slightly older-than-average college student; now I am a patent attorney (something I would never have guessed to be a future career trajectory). It's fun to comment again, for old times' sake, and I'm glad I remembered my login credentials!

In addition to what other responders have said, the entire life of the author (not to mention so many years beyond it) is arguably "unlimited" -- at least, I find it hard to believe that whoever wrote "limited Times" would have thought that the rest of the author's life could somehow fit into its definition...

This. In fact, where I work, IT is the only department where we don't have that disclaimer in our email signatures.

I wish I had your confidence that the police are always good enough to do that. It must be quite pleasant to be able to ignore all the news reports of police misconduct...

Why should I pay more for what any reasonable person ought to be able to expect? If I pay for something, it's my right to expect a functional and safe product in return. Hell, Free/Open Source software gives me that for free, and yet some profit-making enterprise can't afford to do it?

And it doesn't cost the vendor anything more to release the source of an outdated piece of software -- they don't have to use an open source license, just allow me to fix what I paid for.