Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
IOn 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.
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I'm no lawyer either. But it seems to me that in the case of copyright extensions there is no time when the highlighted phrase above actually applies. If the work is in copyright then it is illegal to copy it. If the copyright is extended then it is still illegal. There's no point where a previously legal copy becomes illegal.
It is noticeable that when Austalia moved from a life+50 years to a life+70 years copyright law, all works that had been PD all stayed PD, so as to avoid retrospective legislation.