Z:gnu-www-ja-eldred-amicus--de1dd6-The constitutional importance/en

The constitutional importance of the &ldquo;limited Times&rdquo; restriction cannot be vitiated, as the Court of Appeals' reasoning would do, by affording Congress the opportunity to create perpetuities on the installment plan, any more than Congress can eliminate the constitutional requirement of originality. Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service, Co., Inc., 499 U.S. 340, 346-347 (1991). The Court of Appeals erred fundamentally in its conclusion that there is &ldquo;nothing in text or in history that suggests that a term of years for a copyright is not a &lsquo;limited Time&rsquo; if it may later be extended for another &lsquo;limited Time.&rsquo;&rdquo; Eldred v. Reno, 239 F.3d 372, 379 (CADC 2001). In this regard, the CTEA should not be judged in isolation. The question is whether there is anything in text or history rendering constitutionally objectionable the eleven extensions of the monopoly term in the last forty years, resulting in a virtual cessation of enlargements to the public domain, capped by the statute before the Court, which postpones the reversion on every single existing copyright for decades.