The life expectancy in the UK 300 years ago was approximately 35 years. [source: http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/seminarpapers/dg09102006.pdf ] This meant that a copyright period of 14 - 28 years was sufficient to cover the average person's lifespan (assuming people did not write books before the age of 7!). One could therefore argue that a longer period might be justifiable. Personally, I do not think that a reduced copyright period of 14 - 28 years would stifle commercial creativity in any way.

The publishers are creating a bad moral precedent...we should not (and in fact do not) need permission to quote something stated in public!

Maybe the US is less relevant than it thinks! When everyone in the third world has a computer in their pocket the American masses will no longer be the masses. When every phone is a smartphone, the brand will not really matter either. (I had look under desk to determine the brand of the PC I am using to type this comment). If Nokia starts churning out cheap Android phones they will be fine.

I suspect because they generate comments!

For the goldfish it must be like living at the graveyard!

Apple's days are numbered. One of these days every phone will be a smartphone, and they will NOT be Apples. They will probably be running Android (as will your TV, GPS, etc) and while it is possible that no single device will have the market share that Apple has, collectively they will out-number Apple by a large margin. Already in some markets (USA?) the number of Android phones is approaching the number of iPhones. As for "Apps", the only native App I want to have to use is the browser, everything else should be in the cloud, accessible from any dumb device with a screen.

The concept of “premium names” seems to be a bit of a scam. I am not surprised that companies are avoiding them.

My Sumsung has a "reject list" feature - the phone does not ring if someone on the list phones.

...and Merry Christmas to you!

Why does one need a special "app" to access a browser-based application (Google Docs)? Does this not defeat the object of using a cloud-based application?