As stated by Tom W. Bell in Trend of Maximum U.S. General Copyright Term (with a very useful chart): "The first federal copyright legislation, the 1790 Copyright Act, set the maximum term at fourteen years plus a renewal term of fourteen years. The 1831 Copyright Act doubled the initial term and retained the conditional renewal term, allowing a total of up to forty-two years of protection. Lawmakers doubled the renewal term in 1909, letting copyrights run for up to fifty-six years. The interim renewal acts of 1962 through 1974 ensured that the copyright in any work in its second term as of September 19, 1962, would not expire before Dec. 31, 1976. The 1976 Copyright Act changed the measure of the default copyright term to life of the author plus fifty years. Recent amendments to the Copyright Act [the ones in 1998] expanded the term yet again, letting it run for the life of the author plus seventy years." The amendments of the Copyright Act, dated October 27, 1998, were a major blow for digital libraries and deeply shocked their founders, beginning with Michael Hart and John Mark Ockerbloom, founder of The Online Books Page. But how were they to measure up to the major publishing companies? Michael wrote in July 1999: "No one has said more against copyright extensions than I have, but Hollywood and the big publishers have seen to it that our Congress won't even mention it in public. The kind of copyright debate going on is totally impractical. It is run by and for the 'Landed Gentry of the Information Age.' 'Information Age'? For whom?" True enough. The political authorities continually speak about an information age while tightening the laws relating to the dissemination of information. The contradiction is obvious. This problem has also affected Australia (forcing Project Gutenberg of Australia to withdraw dozens of books from its collections) and several European countries. In a number of countries, the rule is now life of the author plus 70 years, instead of life plus 50 years, following pressure from content owners, with the subsequent "harmonization" of national copyright laws as a response to the "globalization of the market". (The Online Books Page gives a summary of the various copyright regimes, with a number of useful links.)