I refer to Jeremy's last interrogatory post, to add one further important question/issue to consider, namely: if any one country decides to change/improve its own national/federal copyright/IP laws (such as the UK, to which Bronac referred to), such changes will only operate within that nation-State.
In other words, because the reach of digital communication can be and is instantly worldwide, there is a major challenge for organisations such as WIPO to achieve some form of supranational inter-governmental consensus that would require a majority of nations to change their laws in the same or a similar way - and to offer reciprocal arrangements for creators and appropriators/users of works from other countries.
It should be remembered that creators' IP rights are chiefly enacted by the nation-State of which they are a citizen, or in which they are legally domiciled. This was the heart of the matter tackled by the then developed nations at the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works signed in 1886.
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