Do you really think that the whole world is waiting for whatever the US say to make their laws? Spain copyright law is dated 1879: https://www.boe.es/buscar/doc.php?id=BOE-A-1879-40001 , based on the French _droit d'auteur_ laws of 1700's. About the matter being discused here, read Artículo 6: dead date + 80.

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input_sh 2 hours ago | parent [-]

No I do not think it's an original concept of the US, more that it was the US that conditioned many other countries to adopt similar laws as a condition for trade deals / investments.

As a concept it existed in one way or the other pretty much ever since the printing press.

	▲	otherme123 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It is not difficult to find that the "US conditioning other countries in the 1970's" actually started in 1886 at the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention when 10 european countries agreed on legal principles to protect original works. Among these 10, France, Germany, Italy, France and UK, so in practice the whole Western Europe. US didn't join until 1989. The original treaty, if I am not misunderstanding here: https://www.wipo.int/en/web/treaties/ip/berne/summary_berne includes a "dead + 50 recomended" protection since the 1908 revision, before that it was up to each country laws, and in 1948 it changed to "dead + 50 minimum mandatory". In 1993 it was raised to "dead + 70" in the UE, to be followed by the US with the same extension in 1988 in Sonny Bono Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act.