Sonny Bono is in fact dead, and that is also the title of the latest compilation project from Illegal Art.
This project is a protest against the Sonny Bono Copyright Term
Extension Act, which passed through Congress in 1998 and was upheld
by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year. This act diminished the
public’s ability to access older works while granting more control to
corporations anxious to preserve a few copyrights from the 1920’s.
Copyright law continues to expand and defeat its original purpose of
promoting advances in the arts and sciences. These excesses damage
the evolution of our culture and only serve corporate interests.We encourage artists to liberally sample from works that would have
fallen into the Public Domain by the year 2004 had the Sonny Bono Act
failed. Artists are also encouraged to create new works by sampling
Sonny Bono’s output (or other artists who embraced the notion of
copyright lasting forever). The deadline for submissions is January
31, 2004.