Wednesday's ruling was not unexpected. First, a federal district court and the federal appeals court in Washington, DC, both ruled that CTEA was constitutional. Then, during oral arguments in October 2000, the justices reserved their most pointed questions for Stanford University's Lessig. At issue in this case is how far Congress may go under the Constitution, which says the government has the 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". Lessig argued that repeated extensions were unconstitutional because they ran afoul of the Constitution's "limited times" requirement and also conflicted with the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech. But just moments into Lessig's opening remarks, justice Sandra Day O'Connor interrupted and noted Congress had repeatedly extended the duration on copyrights, with no intervention before by the Supreme Court. What, O'Connor asked, is different about this case? "You're right," Lessig replied. "The 1976 act would be unconstitutional." But he said that because ditching that long-established law would be so disruptive to America's economy, it should remain intact. Over the last 40 years, bowing to pressure from movie studios and record labels, Congress has lengthened copyright durations 11 times. CTEA extends copyrights 70 years after the death of the artist and, for those copyrights held by corporations, a total of 95 years in duration. Lessig brought the lawsuit on behalf of 11 plaintiffs, including Eric Eldred, who runs the free Internet library called Eldritch Press. Eldred started the Web site in 1995 and uses it to distribute American literature such as the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., and Henry James. In the lawsuit, Eldred said the CTEA made it unlawful to post works from 1923 that would have otherwise begun to fall into the public domain. Those included "New Hampshire" by Robert Frost, "Horses and Men" by Sherwood Anderson and "Racundra's First Cruise" by Arthur Ransome.
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