re: #274 Belafon

Yes. Otherwise, maybe we should eliminate the whole system that has allowed you to keep your IP for this long. I don’t mean that as a threat, I mean it as we’ve set up a system that protects you temporarily so that you can thrive. It shouldn’t mean forever.

It definitely does not mean forever. The relevant part of the constitution reads:

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.

So an explicitly eternal copyright is unconstitutional. That’s why we have this nice long copyright term that is extended every time Disney wants it to be. After that, some idealistic fool wastes time and money filling suit citing this part of the constitution and SCOTUS replies “The Mickey Mouse protection Act of 2525 defines a copyright term of life of the author + 500 years. This is ‘limited’ and is therefore constitutional.”