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I have been thinking...about American Constitutional Law. And copyright changes over the years (i.e. since 1976). I was wondering of any of the lawyers in the house might unofficially weigh in on the following concept...
On of the bedrock pieces of our jurisprudence is the concept of no ex post facto law. For the non-latin speakers, that means in the US you can't make a law that applies retroactively. In other words, you can't put someone in jail for doing something that was legal when he/she did it, but the law was changed to make that act illegal later and backdated to make your act criminal, even though it was legal at the time.
I started wondering, are extension of the copyright law effective an ex post facto law change? Not for current works, but the retroactive application to previous work created under older copyright law?
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