2008/9/8 WJhonson@aol.com:
I take the opposite tack. Until we find some case law that "exercises" the statute law, we really have no clear way to interpret what that statute law really means. We can make interpretations of it, but we cannot rule out other interpretations that could be gleaned from it as well. And we all know how widely disparate various interpretations of the same law can be.
The problem is that that creates a complete mess with things like Freedom of panorama and invalidates all but two free licenses neither of which we use to any great extent. It is likely that it also creates issues with the PD-US gov stuff and things like crown copyright expired.
Most life+whatever laws have not technically been tested so rejecting statute law until we have some case law isn't practical.