In fact, I would note that this week's podcast, which dropped just a couple of hours ago, features an interview with Paul Heald, the expert on copyright term extension. We specifically talked about his research in the area and the costs and consequences of term extension. He's done some really interesting work that looked at things like Amazon data to try to identify the impact of access to works when they're in copyright and once they fall into the public domain. What he found in fact was that works that are out of print but still in copyright become much tougher to access. It hurts both authors and the public, whereas once works fall into the public domain, they become more widely accessible. He looked at Wikipedia data to try to put a value on the value of the public domain by noting the use of pictures that are in the public domain and what their value would be. He noted that it runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
In direct answer to your question, we now have multiple studies that point to the enormous costs that come from term extensions. What that would do in this case is literally stop our public domain from expanding for two decades—for really an entire generation. What that means from an education perspective at a time when, if you go into our schools, especially at elementary and high school levels, you find that the public domain works still play a critically important role.... In fact, the Ontario Book Publishers Organization conducted a study on the role of Canadian works in our schools. What they found was that the public domain still constitutes an important part of what we are accessing and using in our classrooms. If we extend the term of copyright, we increase costs and we make those works ultimately less accessible and more costly for education.