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I'm guessing it must only apply to contracts entered into after the law took affect, otherwise you are retroactively changing the impact to contracts.
For example, suppose in 1977 Harper Collins bought profit-sharing rights (or some other financial agreement) for $50MM from Simon and Schuster related to sales of a book published in 1940 that was still popular (think LoTR). The amount they paid would have been based on the expectation of a return for many years into the future. If the 1978 law applied retroactively, the value would go to $0 instantly in less than a year as the author ended his contract with HC.
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