Z:gnu-www-ja-eldred-amicus--7687ed-This position simply cannot be/en

This position simply cannot be right. The Court below conceded that an attempt by Congress to make copyright perpetual in haec verba would be prohibited by the language of the Copyright Clause. Id., at 377. But even if the subterfuge of achieving perpetuity piecemeal, by repeated retroactive extensions, somehow evades the plain command of the Copyright Clause, it does not thus render impotent the First Amendment. As the great copyright scholar Melville Nimmer asked: