I am not an expert on patent and copyright law, however, to my knowledge the duration of copyright has not changed since 1978. Patents are potentially affected by WTO, which may lengthen initial patent to 20 years (from 17 years for most patents now) but there would be no allowable extensions (another 17 years.) So, if anything, new treaty obligations would effectively shorten patent terms.
Anyway, the original poster spouts Stallman's crap about patents as if it were true. Among many inaccuracies FSF/Stallman claims the Founders did not intend to allow software patents. Complete nonsense. They clearly did not intend intellectual property protection to be extended merely to durable innovations. [FSF/Stallman in fact claim there is no such thing as intellectual property, and that merely using the phrase is impermissible.]
I notice, however, that in subsequent posts the author doesn't come back to defending Stallman. Perhaps he thinks the "great accomplishments" of GNU need no defending. Or perhaps he's finally actually read the GNU GPL, a promiscuous legal agreement that essentially sucks up any intellectual property even remotely connected to GNU and makes it "free;" (i.e. steals it) a document no person with an ounce of sense would sign on to actively or tacitly. In any event, if he wants to come back and debate Stallman with me, I would love it. The guy is just about the biggest whackjob alive.
The “viral” nature of a GPL license means only that if you pass on TO SOMEONE OUTSIDE OF YOUR OWN PERSONAL OR BUSINESS ENTITY something of your own bundled with something you got by GPL, you have to license the whole shebang to that someone under GPL. The GPL license is very clear and it (apologies to Obama) has been twittered and blogged and stuff all over the place if you cannot read plain English. Nobody is getting suckered by Stallman’s GPLs.
Come back when you know what you're talking about.
Copyright has been extended since 1978: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf
Under the law in effect before 1978, copyright was secured
either on the date a work was published with a copyright
notice or on the date of registration if the work was reg
istered in unpublished form. In either case, the copyright
endured for a first term of 28 years from the date it was
secured. During the last (28th) year of the first term, the
copyright was eligible for renewal. The Copyright Act of 1976
extended the renewal term from 28 to 47 years for copy
rights that were subsisting on January 1, 1978, or for pre1978
copyrights restored under the Uruguay Round Agreements
Act (URAA), making these works eligible for a total term of
protection of 75 years. Public Law 105298, enacted on Octo
ber 27, 1998, further extended the renewal term of copyrights
still subsisting on that date by an additional 20 years, provid
ing for a renewal term of 67 years and a total term of protec
tion of 95 years.