It's only a point of contention for those who don't know what a copyright is. It's NEVER a sale, it's always a license to use. They're never selling the copyrighted material, they're only licensing its use. You can't buy a book and then copy it and start distributing to thousands of people.
The purchase of a book gives you physical possession of the book itself, but only a license to fair use of its contents. Since there is no explicit geographic restriction on the use license for a printed book (nor anyway to enforce it anyways), fair use is global. However, if the book was in electronic form, the copyright owner would have the right to license it with specific access terms if they wanted to.
Since the use license granted for a DVD has explicit geographic restrictions (and they're not a secret - they're printed on the box), then so does fair use per that license. Just as with a book, buying a DVD gives you physical possession of the disk, but only a license to use the copyrighted material per fair use relative to the specifics of the license terms. Your purchase and use of the DVD implies your acceptance of the terms of the use license and any access restrictions.
Just as a rental DVD provided under a use license that lets you view the DVD for 7 days means that fair use also expires after 7 days. Just because you have the disk doesn't mean you have the right to keep using it after the prescribed time period.
Restrictions imposed on the access to licensed copyrighted material carry through to what is and isn't "fair use".
Re: term of patents vs. copyrights - I agree that very long term (e.g., 50 year) patents could clearly have negative effects on innovation and that was the primary concern in the Constitution.
However, given the high cost and time it can take to develop and then try to exploit some patents, 20 years isn't an unrealistic time period. The more pressing issue on patents is that they've been granting them on things that have no business being patented in the first place - like naturally occuring genes.
However, if the copyright on "Oops I did it again" or Charlie's Angels or Harry Potter NEVER expired - who cares? It would have no negative impact on innovation or creativity just as the expiration of their copyrights will not bolster innovation nor creativity.
Is it terrible that some children's home still receives a small royalty payment every time Peter Pan is performed.
And what societal benefit would it have been to have allowed some people to sell royalty free copies of old Disney cartoons and characters (had their older shorter copyright periods expired)?
Can you think of ANY harm the current life of artist plus 70 years copyright term does or any impeding of the "useful arts" it causes?
And with the current copyright terms, it IS unlikely that anyone will confront the issue of being unable to access material with expired copyrights. The example of the old Disney character copyrights almost expiring doesn't apply because the current copyright term is what matters. You'll only be confronting expirations over the next two decades of works that were copyrighted between 1908 and 1928 (and those might have already expired prior to the extension of term). So I'm unclear what the real argument is about expiring copyrights?
