Quote:
Originally Posted by ApK
Not necessarily.There'd be ways around that. A limited term of 1,000,000 years and a sympathetic SCOTUS would be one way. The mechanism that keeps our Army continuously existent while the Constitution says they can only fund a standing Army for 2 years is another possibility, but I digress.
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To allow a 1,000,000 year copyright, the court would have to rule that 1,000,000 years constituted "limited times". No reasonable person would reach that conclusion, but people are sometimes unreasonable. So far, the Supreme Court has ruled that extensions haven't violated limited times, but that's not the same as saying anything short of infinity is limited times.
As far as the standing army goes, Congress follows the letter of the law by reauthorizing it with each Congress. The people who wrote the Constitution may not have wanted a standing army, but they gave the power to have one indefinately, so long as it was voted on every 2 years.