Oregon Law Review 2005 Comment *655 THE DREAM THAT NEVER DIES: ELDRED V. ASHCROFT, THE AUTHOR, AND THE SEARCH FOR PERPETUAL COPYRIGHT

In 1998, Mary Bono, congresswoman and widow of singer/actor/congressman Sonny Bono, implored her colleagues to adopt the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) that bore her departed husband's name and ideological imprimatur. [FN2] Mrs. Bono reported that Mr. Bono had "wanted the term of copyright protection to last forever," [FN3] though the CTEA's drafters modestly aspired to add only twenty years to the then-existing term of the author's life plus fifty years. [FN4] The additional term provided virtually no additional incentive to authors, diminished the public domain, and was not rationally related to the progress of creative *656 expression, yet the Supreme Court validated the extension in Eldred v. Ashcroft despite the CTEA's dubious utility and constitutionality. [FN5]