[sonny bono
copyright term
extension act]
just change the rules as you go along

Although a well-placed tree did its best to eliminate Bono's ignoble Hollywood-centric legislation (one of the chief beneficiaries is certainly the Disney corporation, many of whose Mickey Mouse cartoons were about to enter the public domain), Representative Mary Bono demonstrated that she was indeed her deceased husband's perfect ideological successor by candidly remarking (and this is from the congressional record):

"Sonny wanted the term of copyright protection to last forever. I am informed by staff that such a change would violate the Constitution. I invite all of you to work with me to strengthen our copyright laws in all of the ways available to us. As you know, there is also Jack Valenti's [of the MPAA] proposal for term to last forever less one day. Perhaps the Committee may look at that next Congress."

There is some hope that this bad law will be overturned. Eric Eldred, a conscientious objector in the war on the public domain, runs Eldrich Press (a Project Gutenberg-style website of out-of-copyright books); he filed suit against the federal government (Eldred v. Reno) in an attempt to call into question the constitutionality of the act, declaring that "the practice of continually extending copyright retroactively [which has been going on since 1962] means that Congress, in effect, is granting copyright holders more than a 'limited term.'" Therefore the Sonny Bono Act violates Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. Unfortunately, Eldred's case has been dismissed, but an appeal is underway.