RE: [dvd-discuss] Eldred Amicus

[Richard Hartman <hartman(at)onetouch.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Roy Murphy [mailto:murphy@panix.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2002 11:35 AM
> To: dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu
> Subject: Re: [dvd-discuss] Eldred Amicus
> 
> 
> 'Twas brillig when Steve Hosgood scrobe:
> > Jolley <tjolley@swbell.net> wrote:
> > > The answer for an upper limit could be in the constitution.
> > >   ...by securing for limited Times to Authors...
> > > Anything granted beyond an author's lifetime
> > > is being granted to someone else.
> >   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > 
> > That's the neatest observation I've seen for a while! There must be 
> > some way to draw the court's attention to it.
> 
> It's a doomed argument.  SCOTUS gives special consideration 
> to the acts 
> of the First Congress.  Since the members of that Congress 
> were largely 
> the same people who wrote the Constitution, the Court presumes that 
> their actions were constitutional.  Since the First Congress 
> passed the 
> 1790 Copyright act with a 14 year term (and a 14 year extension upon 
> renewal if the author is still alive and renews), terms exceeding the 
> lifespan of the author are presumptively constitutional.
>  

_Fixed_ terms that _happen_ to exceed the lifespan of the
author (because he died before the term expired).  Not terms
based upon "life of the author + X".  Note also that the 
renewal was contingent upon the author still being alive
at the time the first term expired.

-- 
-Richard M. Hartman
hartman@onetouch.com

186,000 mi./sec ... not just a good idea, it's the LAW!