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Online Publisher Challenges
Copyright Extension Act

An online publisher has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Copyright Term Extension Act passed by Congress last year. The law, signed by President Clinton in October, lengthened the life-plus-50-year copyright term by 20 years.

The CNet online news service reported January 12 that Harvard Law School professor Larry Lessig filed the suit in the U.S. District Court in Washington on behalf of the Eldritch Press, which posts literary classics on the Internet once they enter the public domain. The publisher argues that although Congress can promote the progress of science and the arts by giving authors and inventors control over their creations, the Constitution provides that copyrights may only be secured for “limited times.”

“Congress arbitrarily extends the copyright monopoly on them every 20 years, by another 20 years, like clockwork,” said cocounsel Jonathan Zittrain. “It's particularly troublesome when the speed and access of the Internet promises a substantial audience for the works that remain locked up.”

Posted January 18, 1999.

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