Ashcroft wins, 7-2. Eldred v. Ashcroft challenged the constitutionality of the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act of 1998, which retroactively extended copyright terms by 20 years. The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the extension-- or more specifically, in favor of Congress's constitutional right to enact such extensions. Majority opinion [PDF], Stevens' dissent [PDF], Breyer's dissent [PDF]. Reactions from Lawrence Lessig, and others.

Eben Moglen, a Columbia University law professor who filed an amicus brief siding with Lessig on behalf of the Free Software Foundation, said one benefit of the decision is that it will radicalize programmers and free-software activists. At the same time, Moglen said, it will embolden the entertainment industry and eventually prompt them to "ask for too much" from Congress.

"The very same arguments the Supreme Court rejected today, it would accept in 2014, if there were no precedents against it," Moglen said. "Everyone who's a member of the literate community would see at that time what Justice Breyer saw today (in his dissent)."

If the majority opinion was they had no constitutional reason to block a retroactive extension by Congress of copyright terms from 75 to 95 years, why would there be a constitutional reason to block an extension from 95 to 115 years? Because 100 is a nice round number? I wholeheartedly believe repeated Congressional extensions violate the spirit of the "limited times" requirement of the Constitution, and with luck, polling the Supreme Court for their take on this every 20 years will eventually inspire the realization that this is what's happening. But 115 years is just as much a "limited time" as 95 years in the letter of the law, and it seems like it'd be difficult to convince a Supreme Court that they're entitled to think otherwise.

Assuming we can never build the overwhelming public support needed to sway Congress away from further extensions that will inevitably be purchased by big media (with the billions of dollars they will make exploiting a monopoly on 90-year-old works of art over the next fifteen years), what's left? An amendment to the Constitution? Who do we speak to about that? Two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of the state legislatures?