Thursday, October 10 2002

Someone on slashdot wrote:

From the bench, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor pointed out that, besides 1998, Congress extended copyrights in 1831, 1909 and 1976. If you are right, O'Connor asked, don't we run the risk of upsetting previous extensions of time?

Another slashdotter wrote:

To add to this, I don't see how voiding the retroactive 1976 extensions, or any of the previous retroactive ones, would matter significantly - because all of the copyrights on the works benefitting from those extensions would have already expired by now anyway had the 1998 law not been passed! So declaring those previous retroactive extensions unconstitutional (even if anyone is asking for that, and Eldred certainly isn't) would not in itself affect the present-day copyright status of anything.

All of the copyrights on the works benefitting from those extensions would have already expired. An interesting argument I think.