On 15 Jan 2003 at 15:21, Steve Gray wrote:
GRAY: And in about 2020, if the congress then is as disgustingly corrupt as the present one, they will extend it to maybe 200 years. (Why fool around with small increases?) And if the Supremes are as dominated by right-wing ideologues as they are now, the extension will be blessed again.
This is off the mark on two counts. The question of the propriety of the copyright extension was *NOT* before the court, and so it wasn't "blessed" this time around -- Eldred *conceded* that the current term was within Congress's discretion to set. Second, as a general rule, the Supreme Court very rarely intrudes on Congress's discretion to "interpret" things, and so it was always unlikely that SCOTUS would get involved in the hairsplitting of "100 yrs is OK, but 110 is not, and life +70 is too long, but maybe life +50 isn't" -- they would view that, quite properly, IMO, as a political question best resolved by Congress rather than a judicial matter cast in concrete by a court decision. Note that copyrights of existing works *HAVE* been extended in the past, and so this action wasn't even precedent setting on that score. Altogether, I think it was a pretty foolish suit and never had a chance, regardless of your opinions about the politics and integrity of the Court. /bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <--