Hal Plotkin writes about Eldred in his latest column:
Free Mickey Stanford Law Professor seeks to overturn the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act
To heighten public awareness of the importance of the case an Internet bookmobile is set to depart San Francisco next Monday on a trip that will bring it to the steps of the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., before arguments wrap up. The van, which will be stopping at schools, libraries and senior centers along the way, is equipped to provide free high-speed access to thousands of literary and artistic works that are already in the public domain.
Tens of thousands of additional books would have come into the public domain (meaning their copyrights would have expired) over the next few years, but now they won’t thanks to the Sonny Bono law.
The U.S. Constitution states:
“The Congress shall have power to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”
So when Congress passed, and President Clinton signed, what turned out to be the latest of 11 consecutive extensions to the length of copyrights, it raised a very important question: Exactly what does the phrase “for limited times” mean?
