They keep extending the limits, beyond anywhere near their original intention.
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.