Jon Noring wrote:
... the most effective lobbying organization, ... is the National Rifle Association.
The Internet Archive, on the other hand, does not have a huge membership ...
An archetypal "Noring". You are comparing a populistic association that pushes some people's hot buttons with an association that requires from their members a considerable re-evaluation of the economic system they live in (verging on communist agitation).
There are two groups of people (with a lot of overlap) that are very large, and if they are organized properly, will carry a lot of clout. One group are personal computer users, which comprise maybe ~200 million people in the U.S.
95% of whom don't know better than paying and giving up their rights for using inferior software. (Or are in the habit of pirating their software, in which case they don't care about rights either.)
The other group are digitial media users, those who purchase various types of digital and electronic media (audio CDs, DVDs, etc.) I'm not sure how big this group is, but it no doubt is in the many 10s of millions in the U.S.
How many of these listen to, say Charlie Parker, and would profit by a reduction of copyright duration?
The idea is to make it worthwhile for people who use computers and/or buy digital media to join the organization. They would get perks of various types.
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