Still Passionate and Confused

As I understand it, just like most "Euro-laws", the Berne Convention allows for various (standardised) options (thus making it easier to get "buy-in" from nations whose existing laws were significantly different from the proposed standard), and one such option is the "defend it or lose it" positition on copyright, which the US opted to retain as part of their national copyright law (unless that's changed recently?).

IANAL, however. =:o}