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Eldred v. Ashcroft Oral Arguments
PMuse and others wrote in about the oral arguments held today in the Eldred v. Ashcroft case challenging the most recent 20-year retroactive extension of copyright terms. Google News will cover the mainstream news stories about it; transcripts of the arguments will eventually be posted; but as I write this the only first-hand reports appear to be LawMeme and the Associated Press. Reader McSpew adds a link to a piece by Steven Levy explaining the importance of Eldred v. Ashcroft and what's really at stake. Update: 10/09 19:12 GMT by T : khkramer links to his own summary of the arguments, writing "I have press credentials
at the court, so I was able to take notes
during the argument, and in the summary I tried to cover
all of the major issues that the Justices
asked about."
"The Court's current contract Courtroom reporter, Alderson Reporting Company, provides transcripts of oral arguments for posting on this Website within 10-15 days after the transcripts are complete."
Hard to comment when the transcripts are at least 2 weeks out. Vapor transcripts!
As much as I don't want it to happen, I'm 99% convinced that the Supreme Court will side with Disney, et al. I just don't see them actually taking a reasonable view of the Constitution and understanding that unlimited extensions equal an unlimited time.
:-/
And when they decide in Disney's favor, that will be a big flashing green light for Congress to sell out all other IP-related protections for the citizens without a second thought.
Say goodbye to the Public Domain. It was fun while it lasted.
I thought the DMCA and the Patriot Act had pretty much put the kibosh on any such rights.
Use of the word "Oral" is in violation of a recent Presidential order made on the request of John Ashcroft, shortly after he decided that the Supreme Court building was indecent.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Having voted for a dead man, simply to see Ashcroft loose his Senate seat, I get a special feeling to see so many people (at least on paper) seem to be against Ashcroft. (I'm still waiting for Preditor v. Ashcroft and Aliens v. Ashcroft)
In retrospect, however, I wish he had won his re-election bid for Senate. He's doing much more harm now than he ever did as a Senator.
We should all use some hacktivism points to start a grassroots campaign to get Lessig nominated by some party for a Supreme Court seat when one is up.
11*43+456^2
The fact is that even if the Supreme Court agrees with the idea that unlimited extension means unlimited time, it must turn to Congress to police itself and enact a "limit on limits" for copyright extension (unless, of course, there is a constituional ammendmant in the works, which i dont see happening in this climate).
However, once the matter goes back to Congress, we are presented with the same problem yet again. Congress now can pass a placation act which will satisfy the Supreme Courts demand, and then in the future extend the "limit on limits". Its a giant loophole whereas they are not actually extending the limits themselves, merely the amount of times the limits can be extended. IANAL, but there is a term for this kind of layered system of laws.
In such a case another lawsuit may be brought, but what will the climate of the Supreme Court be at that point, after another x amount of years of corporate lobbying (or, for the positive thinking, of lobbying for the public domain)? A corporation thinking in the long term is probably not worried at all.
"Moving through the masses like a fish through water." syrup
After all, if there's no incentive for people to create things, nothing good will be created.
On the other hand, if there's no raw materials for people to create things, nothing good will be created. You can already start to see this happening in fields such as songwriting, where some songwriters are having trouble getting around the theoretical limit on the number of distinct melodies in the Western musical scale, which is fewer than 50,000.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The first link listed at Google News is this slashdot article. Thats funny, looping links.
-- 4 8 15 16 23 42
FYI, just in case anyone did not know, Disney is embroiled in a massive lawsuit over its use of Winnie the Pooh. Basically, they want to keep the billion dollars they have made in Pooh merchandise and films and not cough up to the estate that originally owned the rights (Disney says they meet their agreed upon obligations).
The next thing they are going to fight for is extending the copywrite on famous works by Plato, Aristotle, Caesar, etc. For the next 2000 years you won't have free access to these approx 2000 year old works!
Before anyone starts up with the Mickey Mouse issue, this only affects the copyright on the "Steamboat Willie" cartoon itself, not the MM character. Mickey Mouse is a protected TRADEMARK and will continue to be protected under trademark law FOREVER.
From Levy article, "They can wrap it in the rhetoric of protecting copyright, but at the end of day they are trying to exert as much control over the marketplace as possible," says Greg Ballard, interim CEO of SonicBlue (which makes the Replay DVR.)
From this report here the justicew seemed concerned with the "chaos" invalidating the CTEA would have on previoous copyright extensions.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
...will never take Alice In Wonderland!
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
Morning Edition
I was at the oral arguments this morning, and since I have press credentials, I was able to take lots of notes.
My summary tries to cover all of the main points the Justices raised in their questioning of both sides.
I was a bit discouraged by how much attention the Justices paid to problems with Lessig's Article I arguments, and how little -- none at all -- they paid to the claim he makes in the brief (and mentioned briefly during the questioning) that the birth of a new technology regime (the Internet) should have a profound impact on how we craft copyright law.
I don't think there's much grounds for guessing which way the court will go on this case. Certainly the people in the pressroom and in the lawyers' lounge today weren't making many predictions. Lessig's argument is so narrowly constructed, and the copyright clause of the constitution is both so clear in intent and non-specific in its wording, that the court really could go either way. Certainly four justices had to think the possibility is there to decide for the petitioners or the Court wouldn't have taken the case. But there was a lot of hard questioning of Lessig, today, and I didn't think he was able to definitively reframe any of the issues that the Justices were concerned about.
I was there this morning and in the hours before we were finally let in many discusions of the issues took place. I have always wondered why copyrights have been extended from the original 28 years, while patents have remained almost unchanged at 20 years. Of course the answer comes down to money. There are competeing monied interests on both sides of the patent issue, while the public domain is not contributing anything to congressmen to hold the expansion of copyright in check
Free cell phone tracking
Did anyone notice that the newest transcript on that site was from April 15, 2002? Do we really have to wait six months for a free transcript of the proceding??
Yes, there are earlier transcripts available for a fee on that page, but shit, this stuff is important.
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
Yeeehaaawwww doggies! I thinks you ought might wanna read up on how them thar courts work in between prayin' ta jebus n milkin; dem cows ya hear?
Fucking uneducated hicks...
How did you even get a computer?
The Spirit of Justice's watchful gaze ends where Ashcroft's drapes begin.
OffTopic: Is there a way to filter Google News to return only "national" publications (plus perhaps publications from my region)? I don't like wading through volumes of crappy local coverage from small towns and cities when I'm looking for reporting on national or world stories.
No, not for lobbyists. That's what we've got now. I mean the following:
Undoubtedly, Disney would stand to lose $$$$$$$ if Mickey Mouse were released from copyright, and it is in their interests to do whatever it takes to preserve it. I can in fact sympathize with that. It is a huge corporate symbol for them, and losing it would hurt bad.
But in order to keep Mickey Mouse, they utterly trash the copyright system, totally destroying the idea of public domain. Some would argue that this is intended, but I'm not quite that cynical. (Yet.)
Why can't we have a sliding scale, where if a corporation wants to hold onto copyright longer than the default, they pay some nontrivial amount of money every few years past the default time in order to renew. That way symbols like Mickey Mouse, which are still viable moneymakers for corporations, can be maintained as long as they are profitable. And anything which isn't lapses into the public domain. Why should that bother them? A few tens of thousands wouldn't even make Disney blink.
Really, I don't think we are out to grab Mickey Mouse away from Disney. What happened to finding a middle ground? I thought that's what American politics was all about.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
These dangerous subversives have free books posted on their website!
It seems that the original intent of "copyrighting", as specified in the Constitution, has been mostly abandoned in the current debate. The writers of the Constitution weren't really concerned with the economic aspects and the rights of capitalists as they were with the welfare of society as a whole.
Ted Olson's case seems to be mostly based in the economic rights of corporations and creators in our capitalist economy. The Supreme Court, who are supposed to use the Constitution as the final arbiter in their decisions, are mostly concerned with legal precedents and the equity of past and present copyright holders.
Does society really benefit from a given legal entity (Disney Corp., for example) holding the rights to a cartoon mouse for eternity? Call me a socialist, but it seems to me that the welfare of society should be given at least an equal consideration to the individual rights of copyright-holders. That's what the founding fathers intended in the constitution, where "economic rights" are secondary to the "natural rights" of mankind.
haha. nice double entendre.
they will never take Alice In Wonderland!
Correct. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll has fallen into the public domain in the United States and is available through Project Gutenberg. Even if the Bono Act had been in effect since the time of its publication, the copyright would have expired in 1969 (1898 death of Carroll + 70 + end of the year) under the author rule or 1961 (1865 first publication + 95 + end of the year) under the work-for-hire/pre-1978 rule. But in the USA, copyright term extensions do not re-copyright works whose copyrights have already expired; thus, all works first published on or before December 31, 1922, are in the public domain in the USA.
The EU is a different matter; copyright law was revised to fit the terms in effect in Germany (life plus 70); works that had been in PD for quite some time fell under copyright once again. In addition, some European countries have granted extensions for works published before World War I, for works published before World War II, and for works published by authors who died in World War I or World War II.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
-nt-
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
"if a limited time is extended for a limited time then it remains a limited time,"
Yeah, guys, and this loop terminates:
int limitedTime = 14;
for ( int i=0;i<limitedTime;i++) {
System.out.println("Copyright Protected");
limitedTime += 50;
}
fools.
"This is not a company that appears to be bothered by ethical boundaries."
Attorney General Mike Hatch on Microsoft
Disney would stand to lose $$$$$$$ if Mickey Mouse were released from copyright
The Bono Act wasn't designed to preserve the monopoly on Mickey Mouse as much as it was designed to preserve the monopoly on nu-skool Winnie-the-Pooh (a relatively recent Disney creation) and old-skool Winnie the Pooh (to which Disney bought the rights from the Milne family). Disney makes much more annually from sales of Pooh merchandise than from sales of Mickey merchandise.
Why can't we have a sliding scale, where if a corporation wants to hold onto copyright longer than the default, they pay some nontrivial amount of money every few years past the default time in order to renew.
Others have proposed similar plans on both Slashdot and Kuro5hin. An interesting plan would make the renewal fees increase exponentially for every subsequent re-extension.
FREE THE BEAR!
Will I retire or break 10K?
At the very least congress-persons should be suspended for a period immediately after. The state that loses their vote will think twice about being *stupid* in the future.
Of course it would make congress-persons think at least twice whether or not the lobby money is worth it, but they'd probably just up their sellout price.
Its not a checks and balances if anyone can do what they want until (and if ever) someone has enough money or time to actually fight a "silly" law. That's just chaos with an upper bounds.
People who quote themselves bug the crap out of me -- Me.
The yahoo article had some quote from AOL saying somehting about its copyrights on "Gone with the WInd" and "The Wizard of Oz" would be "threatened". as if thats a bad bad thing. THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT for crying out loud.
Its insane. Absolutly insane that these people have zero regard for anything but themselves, I have to admitt, it disgusts me sometimes that I live in this society.
.. but this case really has nothing to do with him. It was originally filed as Eldred v. Reno. The reason that the defendant was Reno (and is now Ashcroft) is because as United States Attorney General, (s)he is the one who is (presumably) responsible for making sure that the law(s) in question will be enforced.
This has nothing to do with personal statements or actions that have been made by either Reno or Ashcroft.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
I have oral arguments with my wife all the time .. well, actually, it's more like arguments about oral, but you know what I mean.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How do you boycott congress?
Could someone explain how trademark could be used to control an article of expired copyright
If and when the Bono Act is overturned: "Of course, you can sell copies of 'Steamboat Willie' and 'Plane Crazy', but you won't be able to print Mickey's name or likeness anywhere on the box."
Will I retire or break 10K?
The law applied to copyrights should be the law that was in place at the time of their creation, not subsequent law, for similar reasons. The intention of copyright law is to encourage creativity; changing the length of copyright after the work has been created inherently cannot do this. Similarly, it would be unfair to those who created works under the 1976 and 1998 versions of copyright law for the rules of their copyright to be ex post facto altered to their (and their heirs) detriment. Any ex post facto change to copyright law is unfair.
Please, please, please refrain from posting stories whose titles contain both the words "Ashcroft" and "oral!"
My psyche is scarred enough the way it is!
I don't understand why these copyrights can/should not stay valid forever. If an author/creator/person has some intellectual property they should be able to set the bounds for how long after they die that property can be freely distributed. If that bound is set for forever and they want their kids to live off their Intellectual property then that's there decision. In the cases of companies owning the intellectual property, I believe it's totally up to them to drop the claim to the property and that they should be able to do this whenever they want.
Anyway it seems like everyone is always making a big deal about getting stuff for free. It seems like the type of stuff they are talking about in this article (movies and photographs and books) can all be easily obtained off the Internet for free. And although the manner they are obtained of the Internet isn't exactly legal, like P2P mp3 downloads, it's pretty common. And I'm not sure about everyone else but I haven't heard of too many cases where individuals were prosecuted for violating copyright laws.
you're kind of an idiot arent you?
...Disney would stand to lose $$$$$$$ if Mickey Mouse were released from copyright...
Wrong. Mickey Mouse is TRADEMARKED, it's different from copyright. You won't ever get the right to use Mickey Mouse, no matter what the outcome of the case is.
...arging that the statute violates the Fifth Amendment prohibition against government takings without just compensation?
Here's the theory: Because of existing copyright law, whenever a creator creates a work, the creator brings into being a bundle of property rights, analogous to the various rights associated with the ownership of real property. Essentially, the copyright is divided into two interests:
1. A present interest owned by the creator of the work (and his assignees) for the duration of the period set forth in copyright law; and
2. A future interest in the public domain.
By extending copyright retroactively, Congress is taking a property right away from the public domain without any compensation in violation of the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment.
There are hurdles to cross, such as whether or not the "public domain" has any rights. In the alternative, I would argue that the public domain is held in trust by the government for all the people, in the same way that the area between high tide and low tide is held in the public trust, and apply the law related to public trust land to the public domain rights created by copyright.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
Err am I the only one who was mislead by the title thinking it was pr0n? "Eldred v. Ashcroft Oral Arguments" Got me fooled I was excited there for a second thinking that slashdot started covering pr0n movies.. Maybe they will make one out of this case, I bet Ron Jeremy would have an idea or 2..
Man, I've got the Law & Order blues...I want to hear the judges' decision NOW! If Jack McCoy had argued this case, instead of Lessig, I'm sure the Supes would be back in like 30 minutes with their decision. ;^)
:^D
Ah well. At least cable is showing L&O every hour on the hour nowadays, so I can get home and get a fix then. GET 'EM JACK!
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
Huh? Sonny Bono was not a Democrat. He was a Whig.
"O'Connor said that she may well be convinced that
the 1998 law is bad policy, but the Court obviously doesn't do
policy."
This isn't true. They don't make laws, but policy decisions are at the very heart of the law. Policy is what determines whether a law is good or bad.
In deciding whether to award attorney's fees to clients that don't win as much as they were offered in an offer of judgement (Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 68) in civil rights actions, the policy of encouraging settlement (it's economically good for the country, as it keeps frivolous lawsuits from wasting the court's time) is in conflict with the policy of having the court make decisions on civil rights cases for the betterment of the country (it gives guidance to lower courts in the future).
So policy is addressed by the SC. If they wanted to say that it's important that people have access to old books, they could certainly do that. In fact, if that's what right for the country, that's their job.
Then no law would ever be deemed unconstitutional. Simple as that.
When limitedTime > MAXINT. DUH
I'm surprised no one has talked about how this decision will affect Europe's laws on copyright. Theoretically, won't AOL still have the copyright on Europe, even if the SC decides for Eldred? Heck, maybe AOLTW will relocate to Berlin!
You already addressed the first problem: who is the government taking the property from? The public domain is an abstract concept, and it's highly doubtful a majority of the court (or even a few justices) would choose to extend the reach of the takings clause to include things that "belong" to the public generally. If anything, that would be more akin to something like a park (as public land, also "belonging" to the people) and re-zoning it for use by a corporation. The government isn't really "taking" anything away from an identifiable person or group, and the public generally has never been seen to have collective rights under the takings clause.
Furthermore, even if one could successfully argue that the takings clause would apply, the government's actions would easily pass the required test. An action will not be considered a taking if it "substantially advances a legitimate state interest." See Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council. Here, the state is advancing a legitimate interest (protection of copyrights, trust me the courts would accept that as legitimate). It is "substantially advanced" because Congress's actions have a direct impact on the value of copyrights.
Bottom line, the argument is a total loser and I couldn't see it ever working in a court. We're much better off challenging on First Amendment (where the standards are much more strict) and Copyright Clause grounds.
Tuck
Tuck's Journal.
If I were on the Supreme Court, I suspect I would want to rule that the big problem is the retroactive aspect of the extension. If a retroactive change is allowed, then the limit on copyrights isn't limited. Then there's the question of what's reasonable. More precisely, what is reasonable may change with time (hence, it's not fixed in the Constitution), but shouldn't the definition of "reasonable" be based on the time when the work was created?
I don't see the Supreme Court getting into an argument with Congress over what is reasonable, so for new works, I wouldn't overturn the new limit. (I would instead work to overturn Congress at the ballot box, but that's another issue.)
Kwin, was a good down to earth summary :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I wouldn't worry too much about it. The Supremes do not hear cases all year round. Their season runs from October until whenever they get done hearing cases. So odds are, there are no transcripts to be had between last April and last week, because there was nothing to trancribe.
:)
If the other poster was right about a two-week transcript lag, then everything is normal.
Nothing to see here, move along.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
Your report was thoughtful, informative, and entertaining. Thanks for putting it up for us.
the twenty year term (from date of filing) was only recently adopted -- it was actually 17 years from 1956 until 1999.
The reason has nothing to do with "competing monied interests on both sides of the patent issue." That's just plain silly -- its gobbledygook. Both copyrights and patents permit the IP owner to assert exclusive rights against any prospective defendant. Every lawsuit for each is between at least two competing entities.
The difference in term has to do with the fundamental differences in the subject matter, scope and nature of the respective intellectual property assets. Patents protect underlying useful structures, mthods and compositions against ANY making, use, sale or offer for sale -- whether or not the infringer knows anything about the inventor's invention. Copyrights, in contrast, protect only expressions, do not protect ideas, procedures, processes, systems or methods of operation, and are not infringed unless copies or derivative works are made from the author's work.
No, you're wrong. See item 6 on this web page. Characters can be copyrighted, and Mickey Mouse is. Likewise for Winnie the Pooh.
Find free books.
The Constitution specifies that "to promote the progress of science and useful arts," Congress should secure "for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
The progress of science and useful arts would have even better, if there was no copyright at all!
Look at your Windows or recent spreadsheet, whatever. If this was copyrighted/patented for 25 years, you would still be using the abacus for your next "royalty fee" calculation or would be stuck with the first but patented solution.
Look how Jpeg, Lzw compression and some other patents destroy progress and support the birth of free formats like Png.
Everything comes down to POWER. Money is just one manifestation of power.
I read a couple of the briefs in the case, and the government's position is essentially that any term is okay as long as it is "limited." Yet, what if Congress decided that copyrights were to last for 1,000 years? 1,000,000? Both terms are limited. It seems to me the government would have to maintain that either of these terms would be fine, but at some point the law is so clearly in violation of the intent of the Constitutional provision that it must fail. No one seems to have made this point in this case, and I wonder why.
TANSTAAFL
I imagine it's a matter of pride, just like for most humans, but why is it that no matter *what* the issue that someone's suing them over, the government always insists that it is absolutely right, and could not be wrong? Even the Executive Branch does this, when it's their job to enforce laws, not make them (Congress) or determine their rightness (SCOTUS). I remember seeing a quote from a DEA executive, saying that the DEA was opposed to any weakening of drug laws. Not that he was opposed, the DEA was opposed. Why is the DEA concerned about whether the laws change? Their job is to enforce existing laws, whatever they may be; there is no good reason for them to oppose changes in the law. (Naturally, they oppose any changes in the law that will make them have less power.)
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Does someone know when the ruling will be announced? I had thought that they usually wait utnil all the cases are heard (in the spring) before announcing them all at once, but I could be mistaken. Can someone clear this up?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Money can lead to power, but money does not always create power. Not everything is a conpsiracy, not everyone has alterior, sinister motives. Their are honestly good politicians in the world.
Poer isn't always in the hands of the bad guys either, just look at any prominemt civil or human rights leader in the past century.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
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The Lloyd estate just successfully won a lawsuit against Disney, on the grounds that their picture "The Waterboy" was a rip-off of the Harold Lloyd silent film (1924) "The Freshman".
I wonder if that's why Disney's past couple of movies have actually been original - they know that in a few more years, there won't be any stories they'll be able to steal.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
What case are you following? This case was narrowly targeted at the issue of retroactive term extensions. Even the plaintiffs admit that they have no authority to tell Congress how long copyright terms may last-- as long as those terms can't be changed after the fact. And I hardly think that this court is going to go further than that.
Shouldn't all copyright laws be stricken down as ex post facto laws, with the laws in place when something was copyrighted have domain over that item?
In other words, if congress wants to make anything copyrighted now still copyrighted 100 years after their authors death fine. But something created nearly a century ago and going into the public domain in a few years?
The worst part of this is that copyright isn't necessary to protect estalished *trademarks* like Pooh and Mickey. So this latest rewrite of copyright law isn't really to protect existing properties, it's a power grab by big business to control *everything else.*
Sounds like Lessig screwed up to me. He's a law professor, not a trial lawyer, so that's perhaps not surprising.
An attorney with a little quicker wits about them would have argued better, if not entirely differently.
Only naive poofs think everything DOESN'T come down to money.
Finally, dachshund has gotten to the kernel of the case! Congress's responsiveness to the private citizen has basically gone away. They don't have much time for you unless you have a lot of money; it's basically a big payola scheme (the US, run by payola - that makes me shudder). If Congress starts making laws that completely pervert the intent of what the Constitutional framers intended, which is exactly what they're doing nowadays, then who can stop them? The President? He's a big rubber stamp; don't count on much intelligence there. The Supreme Court also has the power to limit Congress, and this is exactly correct way to go about it.
The only part that concerns me comes from the notes that whoever took at the proceedings. According to his report, one of the justices said that the court does not do "policy", but only "legality". This seems a bit more policy-like from where I sit.
From the summary notes, it sounds as if he made a complete hash of it. I mean, his argument should be that the founders stated for "limited times" and that "limited times" there did not mean mathematically limited, otherwise as long as the congress didn't make copyright eternal, they can make it 1000 years long. "Limited times" certainly means less than the average human life. There is no way the framers could have meant or expected 90 years! Screw this whole Internet changes everything crap! That is neither here nor there! A 90 year copyright is wrong for EVERY kind of media! It robs the public domain! THAT should be the argument!
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
${Everyone} is either a reference to an array (which would presumably be something like @Everyone or an array of arrays @Everyone_in_Kansas, @Everyone_in_New_York, etc), an object reference (which might make sense, but is complicated), or it's a scalar.
... );
It makes much more sense to describe Everyone as an array of all people, ie
@Everyone = ("you", "me", "bob", "taco", "that stupid guy next door", "that hottie on tv",
But anyways, you make good points. I'm just stupid.
-alex
My comments, also posted on my web site:
This was my first time at oral arguments, so I have to admit I don't have anything to compare them to. For example, I felt that the Justices were harder on Theodore Olson (Solicitor General, argued the case for the Government) than they were on Larry Lessig (lawyer for the petitioners). This may just be because the justices know him better, though. To make my life even more difficult, the seat I was assigned had a nice fat column between me and everybody of significance. I could see the back of Justice Ginsburg's chair before she sat down. I was able to identify some of the Justices from their voices, but it was difficult. Oh, Declan McCullagh was there in a leather jacket. Didn't wear it to the courtroom, though. He'll probably have pictures up on his site later today, and I've got a couple I'll put up here.
On to the case: the first question came from Justice O'Connor, asking about the previous copyright extensions, which had not been challenged. Prof. Lessig pointed out that the 1790 Copyright law established a copyright for works already existing, but that was the first time such a law had been passed here -- before that existing works had no Federal copyright protection. That made the protection different from the extensions passed in the following years. Justices O'Connor and Rehnquist proceeded to press him on the significance that even the following extensions were unchallenged, and during Olson's time he pointed this out, saying that the petitioners therefore had a heavy burden challenging a law that had essentially stood for centuries. Prof. Lessig's response was that there has been a fundamental change, even since the copyright term changes made in 1976. In 1976, the copyright affected mainly commercial copyright producers and distributors, and they were the ones who benefitted from the laws. Now, however, the popularization of the Internet has made copyright an issue for many people. As an example, the primary petitioner in this case, Mr. Eldred, publishes public domain books on his web site, and he does it for free. Such a thing was unheard of in 1976. Mr. Eldred is only hurt by this copyright extension: he sees no benefit. The 1976 law would be unconstitutional if challenged now, but no one was seriously injured by it when it was passed, so it went unchallenged.
A sense I got from several justices was that they didn't approve of the copyright terms, but didn't see a Constitutional argument against them. Justice O'Connor came right out and said, "I can find a lot of fault with what Congress did here," and Justice Breyer, when questioning Olson, cited some numbers showing how much money copyright owners gained from the extended terms, compared to the losses to the public due to copyright restrictions. The counter argument was that copyright terms provide an incentive for distributors to preserve their works. While it was conceded by Lessig that Congress could not grant a copyright on a work currently in the public domain, Congress could grant an extended term conditioned on a promise to preserve and actively distribute a work. This would allow works for which the copyright owner could not be identified (such as many of those sought by Mr. Eldred) to pass into the public domain.
While I generally felt that the Justices were harder on Olson, they didn't seem to be too happy with the Consitutional arguments given by the petitioners. One point they did seem to like, and pressed Olson repeatedly with, was that, if the preambular part of the Copyright Clause is not read to be a limitation on copyright terms, and if the word "limited" does not mean "fixed" or "immutable," is there any limit on Congress's power to extend copyright terms? Olson's reponse was to point out that that is not the issue before this court, and I have to agree. While the Court is certainly free to say that the Congress's extensions are subject to judicial review on the grounds that "limited" need be reasonable or something like that, and establish some guidelines for that review, it has not been asked to do that in this case. More importantly, despite the Justices' feelings that there should be judicial review, lack of an explicit Constitutional limit on Congress's interpretation of "limited" does not create that power for the Court. It simply may be the case that Congress has the power to extend it however long it wants, as long as it is not "unlimited." The recourse for that, of course, is elections. Olson pointed out that the Framers had the power to put a specific length of time in the Constitution, and Jefferson actually encouraged it, but they eventually chose not to; they chose to give that power to Congress.
Lessig cited a figure he claimed a group of economists calculated: the current copyright terms give copyright owners 99.8% of the benefits they would get under a perpetual term. I would guess that assumes the benefits converge, although I'm no economist. I'm also no Supreme Court scholar, but my gut feeling right now is that the Court is going to strike down CTEA and establish some guidelines for what is an acceptable copyright term. I personally don't agree from a Constitutional standpoint. We'll find out in a couple of months, I suppose.
From khkramer's summary, "Breyer joked that if Lessig's argument about 1998 applied equally to 1976, then he'd better find another argument. Everyonelaughed. (Everyone always laughed whenever a Justice made a joke.)"
This point should be pivotal to interpreting Congress's intent re copyright extension!
Guess you missed part of the news a ways back. "It's a Wonderful Life" is effectively back under copyright by a corporation (not the original authors, composers, etc.) because they realized that copyright on the music or at least the sound track hadn't lapsed, and they renewed it.
My understanding was that in theory you could have copied the film, done derivative works, etc. ad nauseum -- but to sell your copy you'd have to totally replace the musical track -- which is not so easy because you have to totally cut the voices, etc. out of the musical background.
So in essence, the copyright extension pulls this back into private hands for what, another 40 years or so?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
The original poster was clearly using make, where ${Everybody} is a variable, which may have multiple variables, and which may be conveniently be updated:
Everybody += EFF
when somebody else wants a law overturned.
Plato wrote his works with 0 copyright protection. Come to think of it, Plato didn't publish his works. He made money from tuition to his academy and used his dialogues as teaching aides. After his death, his students published his dialogues from his notes (same thing happened to Aristotle's lectures)
Shakespeare (or de Veere, or whoever) wrote most of his works on (I believe) a 2-year exclusive performance contract with the theater he wrote them for and no effective copyright protection (most of the Quarto publications, after all, were essentially pirated... warez tragedy, as it were; the first "official" publication, the Folio, was almost a decade after his death and done by actors reconstructing the plays from their partbooks). His only "protection" came from the exclusive performance rights he would grant to troupes and from the fact that his style was original enough that nobody could pass off his work as their own.
Maybe the solution should be that only the actual human being who created a work can hold its copyright... silly and unworkable, I know, but so is the current system.
All's true that is mistrusted
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Remote desert. I have a .50 BMG sniper rifle. You have a million dollars in Franklins. Who has power here? Moron.
I thought there were some "takebacks" in 1997 ... Lots of Spanish films, music, etc. were "recopyrighted".
You're referring to the Uruguay Round Agreements Act. That act restored copyright to some works whose copyrights had not expired but which had fallen into PD due to some other technicality, mostly by not being first published in the United States. It was implemented as part of the Uruguay round of WTO/WIPO treaties.
Like the Bono Act, the URAA is under a constitutional challenge, in Golan v. Ashcroft.
Will I retire or break 10K?
had the Bono act been in effect since the time of its publication, there never would have been a Disney Alice in Wonderland.
No. Disney's Alice in Wonderland would have been a licensed work like Peter Pan and Tarzan.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Maybe that's what they are really with the doublespeak about "terra-ists", "homeland", "evil-doers", "enemy combatants", etc. By making new definition for older words they can make is t=so that when you read the constitution and look up the definition of the words in the Newspeak Dictionary - it will mean what they wan't it to mean.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
I give a couple thousand to the local militia and you and your family are dragged away and killed before you even got close enough to my heavily gaurded mansion to take a shot.
Silly scenarios like yours are irrelevent to reality.
Moron.
Did you ever think about why Elementary School takes 8 years but High School takes just 4? Obviously it all comes down to money.
Ex post facto is when "they" pass a law after you break it. It's perfectly legal to pass a murder law prosecuting murder of people born before the law is passed, you just can't pass a murder law prosecuting murder of people killed before the law is passed.
The argument is pretty straightforward. The court has ruled that where the Constitution grants a limited Congressional power, there must be a demonstrable limit to Congress's authority. The Supreme Court has made this ruling in the past.
In this case, there is no demonstrable limit. The government is arguing that it may extend copyright as many times as it wishes-- an unlimited number of times, if necessary. That interpretation clearly clashes with the straightforward requirement of "limited times". Thus there is no guaranteed limit on the power, and thus the law is not Constitutional. The notion of "reasonable" times doesn't really enter into it.
The recourse for that, of course, is elections. Olson pointed out that the Framers had the power to put a specific length of time in the Constitution, and Jefferson actually encouraged it, but they eventually chose not to; they chose to give that power to Congress.
You're going to have to fight that one out with the Framers. Clearly they did not feel that the political process provided a strong enough check on government power, so they wrote a strong constitution and created a Judicial branch to oversee it.
If you agree with my interpretation of "limited", the court has all the legal and moral authority it needs to rule against the law. If you don't, then you'll probably feel that it's a political issue. The court is in the process of making this determination, so let's not jump the gun.
IANACL, but it's my understanding that the intent with which a power is granted to a branch of government doesn't matter much. The problem is that the likely outcome of any given law is a matter of opinion. This is why we need legislatures to begin with: to decide what laws would be beneficial and which would be harmful. Clearly, the constitution does not intend to have congress pass bad laws, but it necessarily empowers them to do so. Once a power is in legislative hands, they can, in effect, use it for whatever purpose they want.
That's why arguments that say excessive copyright and patent terms retard progress don't carry much weight. It's often a matter of opinion; any particular law is likely to have mixed results. The courts don't want to get into the business of deciding what kinds of laws are beneficial -- just which ones are legal.
Copyright abuse opponents have to resort to careful parsing of the copyright clause to see if abusive copyright laws exceed the powers literally granted to congress. Lessig's approach is the most promising -- the clause doesn't say that congress has the power to modify copyright terms that have already been granted. I've heard other approaches, such as one judge who asserted that the nature of the power granted to congress was a specifically a power to promote progress. It's a bit of a stretch though. Accepting this argument brings the courts back into the business of judging whether a law is wise or not.
As much as we in the US revere it, the Constitution has over the years been proven to be pretty poorly drafted in many places. The copyright clause is a perfect example. Clearly the framers wanted copyright to be limited and their perosnal experience would have shown them that long copyrights are bad. At the time of the US Revolution, copyrights on literary works were perpetual and held by booksellers. If you wanted Paradise Lost, you paid Tonson's whatever Tonson's wanted to charge you, and you accepted a copy with whatever printing errors they didn't feel like correction. Clearly, the men of learning among the framers intended to remedy this situation by limiting the copyright term.
However, what they actually accomplished in article 2 was to effectively give Congress the power to grant perpetual copyrights. A term of a billion years is, literally speaking, limited, even though none of nor any of our descendents will ever see that term expire. Of course, such a law would be so obviously capricious and repulsive that the court would feel justified in stepping in.
The problem with gradual copyright extension is that it ever so gradually conditions us to accept the absurd. At the outset, a copyright term of seventy five years would have been absurd. However over the course of two hundred years, gradual encroachment has got us here. Most importantly, the term of a copyright is now a full human lifespan. That means few people alive have experienced having works they remember from their youth becoming part of the public domain.
Because of copyright extension, we have reached the point where the common person's experience doesn't provide him with any commonsensical checks on copyright terms at all.
It's extremely important that Mr. Lessig win his case.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The Oliver North / bin Laden story is an urban legend, see the snopes page on this. It's debunked by North personally. He did make a reference to being threatened by a terrorist, but it was Abu Nidal, not Osama bin Laden, who was on OUR side back then.
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
That's what the founding fathers intended in the constitution, where "economic rights" are secondary to the "natural rights" of mankind.
Copyright is not a natural right, it is artificial. Natural would be no copyright, since anytime I see a new idea and think it's good, I can just walk off and utilize it. Copyright prevents this for the benefit of the original creator to encourage them to innovate. Thus, extending copyright is trampeling on our "natural rights".
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
I know that a press assistant putting a blue cloth backdrop behind the AG when he speaks to provide better photos isn't as funny a story, but hey, the truth isn't always as amusing as fiction.
Then he must be standing out there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, because according to the New York Times, that's how long the curtain stays up.
In addition, if he cares so much about how he looks in pictures, why did his spokeswoman make the statement, "He doesn't look at his press coverage a lot, himself", when asked about the issue?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
First, if "a few tens of thousands wouldn't even make Disney blink" then it's trivial. ;)
Second, allowing someone to pay to extend their copyright is actually contrary to the justification of copyright. Copyright exists to ensure that stuff is created and eventually released to the public. If a creation is still valuable enough to justify paying for a copyright extension, then the creator has already received compensation for it, and it's valuable enough to require release to the public.
*bow*
;)
thanks for the info... like i said, i'm just stupid.
-alex
If copyrights are now effectively indefinite, copyright holders should have to pay taxes like real estate owners to keep works out of the public domain. A starting amount would be 3% per year of a self-assessed value, where anyone could pay the entire self-assessed value to the copyright owner to force the work to be placed immediately in the public domain.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Look how Jpeg, Lzw compression and some other patents destroy progress and support the birth of free formats like Png.
Of course, well all know that. But the difficulty doesn't lie in convicing us. We use these tools every day, it's what we do. We see how the "system" is practically crumbling before our very eyes...but most people don't live in our world.
The question in how can you convey our understanding to a group of justices who are probably even less technologically inclined than your grandmother?
If you read the trascript, the jusitices questioned why there was never any objection raised before? There have been 11 consecutive extensions of the copyright duration, and very little dissent was voiced until recently. Eldred's response was "the internet changes everything". Now, we all know exactly what he means, but do you think there's a prayer in hell that these justices know?
This is a very complex system of interdependancies that does not easily lend itself to precedence or analogy. I just hope Eldred can come up with more than "the internet changes everything". Because there will be no internet if he's wrong.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Assume that John Williams as a composer has the copyright on the musical score to Star Wars (1977), for example. He and/or his inheritors, for example would hold the copyright for death plus X years. If that particular part of the copyright is sold to Lucasfilm as a company, then they should in theory owns the copyright for the same number of years because it was an author's copyright, even though the author has no further financial interest [having sold it to the company]. Which is why most book publishers insist on getting the copyright instead of the author, by the way.
So how does a corporate copy "right" fit into the constitutional framework if the author, etc. has no further or future financial interest?
Or consider the opposite -- the film copyright expires, but not the musical copyright. Does this mean that John Williams and his inheritors can then de-facto control the re-distribution of Star Wars because without his score the movie just isn't the same?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, I'll take snopes.com's word over Maureen Dowd's -- she hardly has a reputation for journalistic integrity (anyone who doubts that can start by reading the article User 956 links)...
It's also not clear why you think pointing out that Mr. Ashcroft himself doesn't spend much time worrying about his press coverage contradicts my statement that the decision to place a plain-color backdrop behind him when he speaks was made by his press assistant without his input, by the way -- if anything it backs up my point.
Don't forget about international treaties!
Does society really benefit from a given legal entity (Disney Corp., for example) holding the rights to a cartoon mouse for eternity? Call me a socialist...
Actually, I'll call you a capitalist...
There's good reason so many economists from across the political spectrum signed onto the amicus brief. The monopoly of copyright is contrary to the ideals of the free market system, and a simple NPV analysis proves that extending terms beyond fifty years does nothing to provide incentive for authors and ONLY serves to benefit a few existing monopoly holders by preventing competition. This is not a conservative vs. liberal issue, it's about lobbyists and their money influencing people on the left and the right to sacrifice their ideals. This is why nearly every politician supports strong copyright while so many academics of both stripes side with Eldred.
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
I'll take the word of the New York Times over a right-wing conservative rag like the National Review. Of course a site that describes itself as "up to the minute conservative commentary" is going to support the conservative Ashcroft. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the mechanics behind that one.
You're either not up to the task, or willing to ignore the obvious. Just don't pretend the National Review is an unbiased source.
Futhermore, if the curtain was indeed up just for press conferences, why is it there all the time?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
If they ever decide to make a movie of this, I think Tim Robbins sure would play a good Larry Lessig...
"Justice Antonin Scalia questioned why Congress needed to include existing works when it decided to beef up copyright laws. If the idea of copyright law is to encourage artists to produce new work, why should it also apply to works created 70 years ago, he asked." -Reuters
khkramer's thoughtful and thorough summary said, in part:
Previously he'd written that he was troubled at the grilling the Justices gave Lessig. ISTR that O'Connor is known for doing that when she finds an argument particularly interesting and wants to know more about it. If in fact she was pushing Lessig to explain his case more precisely, that's a good sign.
I did realize that this is not strictly an ex post facto case- that was why I phrased it as 'should be' and 'for similar reasons'. I think the comparison is much closer than your example, however; in each case the law at the time of the action is taken should govern, whether it's an illegal action or an action of creating a copyrighted work. It's not legal to retroactively add ten years to the jail terms of persons already convicted and sentenced- why is it permissable to forbid the general public from access to a work after the time that was established to be the duration of copyright when the work was made?
One problem is when a copyright is made in the name of a corporation which has a theoretically unlimited lifespan. If the Supreme Court ruled that the maximum length of a copyright is the lifespan of the author, then you would see a mad rush to copyright everything in the name of a business. This would have to be prevented as it is an attempt to bypass a Constitutional limit.
My personal solution is to automatically assign the lifespan of the current CEO of the business when the copyright is filed in the corporation's name - and changing the original name is not allowed. Most of them are old bastards who will die in 20 years from overwork or within 5 years during a prison gang rape (that was a joke - so laugh!).
-- Will program for bandwidth
At the linked summary, it sounds like Lessig failed to address an essential portion of his argument. According to his reply brief, there is a huge difference between an equally applied retroactive extension and an equally applied proactive extension. He suggests, with references, that court precedent has shown that a retroactive extension requires a quid-pro-quo. If the law said copyrights were only extended for people that gave congress $5, or republished the work, or *something*, then the law would fly. Since there's no exchange, the law breaks judicial precedent.
I have *no* idea if this argument is correct. Please do not rely on my description of it. Read the brief (they're not hard to read at all). Is there a lawyer out there that can tell us if his quid-pro-quo argument is obviously valid, obviously wrong, or open for debate?
Does it make a difference if an essential point is only made in a brief, but not in oral arguments?
Am I misunderstanding the argument, or how it applies?
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
http://www.aynrand.org/medialink/copyrightlaw.shtm l
Would-Be Intellectual Vandals Get Their Day in the Supreme Court
Those who are spearheading the current legal challenge to the copyright law favor intellectual cannibalism masquerading as creativity and free speech.
Am I the only one that wishes the Justices would read "Melencholy Elephants" by Spider Robinson? It s a short story about the hazards of copywrite extention. The title comes from the idea that elephants never smile because they never forget.
"I have press credentials at the court, so I was able to take notes during the argument"
Hmmm... press credentials; now why didn't I think of that? Come on inkjet printer, court starts in an hour; let's get a move-on.
Hell, I'd just like to heckle Ashcroft (assuming he's in there) and maybe wear my "Got DeCSS?" t-shirt.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Eldrad must live!
What's the skool Winnie the Pooh?
"Classic Pooh", or old-skool Pooh, refers to the style of drawing seen in A. E. Shepard's original illustrations in the books Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne.
"Disney's Pooh", or nu-skool Pooh, refers to the style of drawing seen in the Disney animated feature The Many Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh and the TV series The New Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh, where Pooh wears a red shirt, Christopher Robin dresses more "normal", most characters have become more detailed, and Gopher has been added to the lineup.
Likewise, there's old-skool Mickey Mouse ("Steamboat Willie" and "Plane Crazy") and nu-skool Mickey Mouse (more recent films, with a more detailed appearance).
In both cases, a ruling for Eldred will send only the old-skool versions to PD.
I just asked my niece, who works for Disney
I know that your niece doesn't represent DisneyCo, but I wonder what her personal opinion is about the Bono Act. Is the propaganda machine inside Disney as big as the one from Disney to Washington?
Will I retire or break 10K?
It wasn't my assertion. Somebody else made it, and I only chimed in to correct Dan's bizarre attack on it. Had Dan simply said "you haven't proven this", that would have been legitimate.
Instead he came up with his bizarre reasoning.
But even so, we can really only show correlation, not causation, since we don't have any decent holdout groups or other controls built in.
Well, assuming statistics are our only way of analyzing these cases. Once you've discovered a correlation, you could get down to nuts and bolts and determine what precisely is causing the richer clients to win-- that might give us some insight into causation that we can't get from statistics.
Even without judicial review, the Constitution is supposed to place a limit on Congress's power. Even if that limit was simply provided by the legislator's oath to uphold the document.
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[four stories that were PD at the time Disney released a movie adaptation] ... Tarzan
Disney's Tarzan was licensed. So were Peter Pan and the live-action movie Mary Poppins.
On the one hand, Disney wants to keep extending the copyright terms so that others can't just wait for the term to expire. On the other, Disney does exactly that: both Pinocchio and The Jungle Book were released one year after the worldwide copyright expired.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I used to love the Walt Disney Company, but now I want Mickey Mouse to be FREE!
I'm hoping the Supreme Court will make the correct decision.
Why yes, sir, that's the whole point. That's what "public domain" means. Maybe if we can get past the knee-jerk incomprehension of "public domain", we can actually inject some sense into these proceedings. But probably not.
Frankly, I wonder if maybe he shouldn't have stuck with his other job as an impeachment court robes designer.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
For example, there were warnings about DMCA back then, but it wasn't high-profile. Nowdays, just about anything technology-related that has the names "Hollings" or "Hatch" on it, causes a million alarm bells to go off all over the internet. People (well, geeks anyway) are a lot more sensitive to the fact that the crooks are serious about attempting to enforce this stuff, than they were a mere 5 years ago. Those were some eye-opening years.
If the 20-year-extention law is struck down, and then congress tries to repass a patched version of it, can you imagine what is going to happen to these people's mail server? It may be that they can say they didn't know they were going against The Peoples' will in 1997, but there won't be any plausible deniability next time, I guarantee it.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
by copyright. As it turns out, although the
owners of the film let their copyright lapse; the
holders of the screenplay didn't. So, some 20
years later they are now asking for royalties
as the film is based upon, and therefore subject
to the copyright of the screen play.
This is why "It's a Wonderful Life" isn't all
that popular on TV any more...
Most of the works concerned be the recent copyright extension have no commercial value. Their copyright owners would lose money if they wanted to publish and distribute them. But as there is no cost incurred by keeping the copyright and not releasing these works to the public domain, they prefer keeping it in the hypothetical case it would regain value in the future (like for instance Hollywood producing a movie based on an obscure pulp hero of the 30's).
So basically, the copyright extension gives no incentive to the owner either to publish or to release these works in the public domain, having the net effect of depriving the public access to the vast majority of the works concerned by the extension. IMHO, this has the exact contrary effect of what the Constitution expected. It locks the vast majority of work from the public to protect the revenue of the fews that are commercially viable.
A fair law would allow such an extension, but it would also force the copyright owners to periodically publish and distribute their works. Failure to do so would automatically put the works in the public domain.
This would benefit the public by making these works available, either through the usual commercial channels or from the public domain, while the copyright owner would still be able to get revenue from the works that are still commercially viable.
I say bring copyrights down to the length of patents. They are the same thing legally (a government-granted monopoly), growing out of the exact same clause of the Constitution. All of the arguments the government has for long copyright terms are hypocritical if they don't have a problem with short patent terms.
Disney is unlikely to lose anything over Mickey even if the Supremes do the right thing here. The copyright that could be lost on Mickey is the old version from way back, you wouldn't even recognise it if you saw it. The new Mickey, the one you're used to seeing, not only has a newer copyright that won't expire for years either way, it's also a TradeMark, and IIRC those don't expire as long as they're defended.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Several Justices Raise Fears
About Copyright Extensions
By RYAN DEZEMBER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON -- Several Supreme Court justices raised concerns about whether overturning a 1998 copyright-extension law would make a mess of the full body of copyright law.
The high court heard arguments in a case involving a law extending copyrights by 20 years to 70 years after the author's death, and to a total of 95 years for corporate works. At stake is how long the rights to such valuable properties as Mickey Mouse and The Great Gatsby, will continue to enrich their owners.
Supreme Court Agrees to a Review of Extension of Copyright Shield02/20/02
On the Docket: Key business cases before the Supreme Court this fall
Archivists, libraries, book companies and others that rely on material in the public domain are fighting to have the latest 20-year copyright extension revoked and such future laws banned. Copyright holders, including AOL Time Warner Inc., said they need control of their intellectual property to fund future works.
Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford Law School professor who argued against copyright extensions on behalf of Eric Eldred, an Internet publisher, and others, said the 20-year extension violated the Constitution's limit on the duration of copyright protection. Under questioning from the justices, Mr. Lessig said if the court accepted his argument against the 1998 law, then earlier copyright extensions, including the sweeping 1976 copyright law, which extended protections beyond the life of authors, also could be challenged.
That possibility seemed to worry Justice Stephen Breyer and some of his colleagues. The chaos that would ensue would be horrendous, Justice Breyer said.
Charles D. Ossola, counsel for the Intellectual Property Owners Association, which favors the 1998 extension, agreed. Mr. Ossola said after the oral argument that opening the door to challenges of earlier copyright law would create almost unimaginable consequences for businesses already intact.
Copyright law dates back to 1790 when Congress passed the first law giving authors the exclusive rights to their work for 14 years. The original constitutional intent of this law was to motivate creative works by giving exclusive rights for a limited time.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist said the Constitution had little to say on the matter as it is applied today. What the framers thought is not applicable to many of today's commerce rules, he said. (Eldred et al. v. Ashcroft)
Write to Ryan Dezember at ryan.dezember@dowjones.com
Updated October 10, 2002
Woopty Doo Basil, what does it all mean?!
Eric Eldred, et al. v. John D. Ashcroft, Attorney General
Woopty Doo Basil, what does it all mean?!
# Amicus - Petitioner:
# Intel Corporation (Merits) [PDF]
Woopty Doo Basil, what does it all mean?!
That bush spesificaly said that he was against lessing in this case, right?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The US constitution dosn't really use many male personal pronouns, for example:
Section 2. The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several states, and the electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislature.
No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the age of twenty five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that state in which he shall be chosen.
The president is refered to as "him" but there's nothing in the constitution that says anything about male reps.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
This would probably be a two part at the end of the season, with the cliff hanger being at the most critcal part. Next episode's highlights would include 1) A new assistant DA (is it just me, or is the blond "actress" as flat as 2 week old coke?) 2) A moral issue that Jack must grapple with, and ultimatly solve in a Jack like fasion and 3) a bloody knife. The bloody knife will lead to a homeless man in New Jersey, and will have no bearing on the case, but it gives Briscoe and whats-his-face something useful to do. (seriously, whats the black detectives name? A&E played mostly the older episodes, stopping at Curtis, and I dont catch it on NBC too often)
Check out the NPR summary of the questioning and the responses.
I think things sound pretty bad for Eldred and Co. There seems little hope that the Court plans to invalidate the life plus 70 term for new works created after 1998. At best, it sounds like the Court might invalidate the retroactive part of the law. This wouldn't be a complete defeat for Eldred, since many of the valuable old works whose creators have been lobbying Congress would be among those that would lose copyright. Therefore, less incentive to lobby.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
From the Wired piece:
.
When justices pressed Olson to explain why Congress should not be limited to extend copyright terms to just future works, Olson said the Constitution requires that Congress -- not the courts -- make that call.
"We're living in an era where piracy is a significant problem," Olson said. . .
Some one explain to me how the length of a copyright term has anything to do with combating piracy. If piracy is a problem, isn't it roughly the same problem at life plus 70 that it was at life plus 50?
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
In Ashcroft's opposing brief (Government brief opposing Supreme Court review:
gov-opp-cert.pdf) He basicly says, hey we've preambled copyright in the past and so what about today?
Page 14:
" To the extent the Copyright Clause itself imposes those limits, they would more logically stem from the body of the Copyright Clause, which authorizes Congress to grant to "Authors and Inventors" the "exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries". The use of the possessive form - "their" writings -- together with the words "Authors" and "Inventors" might be thought to preclude copyright protection from works that are not original or that are in the public domain; in such cases, the individuals seeking protection might not be considered the "authors", and the work might not be considered "theirs".
("An author's 'Writing' or an inventor's 'Discovery' can, in the constitutional sense, only extend to that which is his own. It may not be broadened to include matters within the public domain."). Because Congress in the CTEA extended copyright only for orginal works that are not already in the public domain, the origin or scope of the requirement that works be "original", or of any prohibition on removing works from the public domain, is not at issue here.
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Congress in the CTEA extending copyright time after time beyond the life-time of the orginal author of the works or invention, is a tricky thing. The orginal Author has exclusive rights on his work. Authors die. Somehow then the copyrights fall into other hands, maybe auctioned at eBay. When the orginal author was just an employee, the copyrights are inside the hands of a company. The company wich holds those copyrights might be takenover by a merger or so, and the new company has the copyrights.
So its possible that copyrights fall into hands of people/company's who might have the slightest idea what its all about. I'm not even questioning if the new copyright holder even can extend or improve the orginal works. And i'm not even thinking about people or company's whose single purpose is to get hold of the copyrights solely to extinct the orginal works or inventions.
So actually the problem is, the orginal Author died and he cannot give his advise from his grave. Maybe by testament a sortof agreemant can be made. What i want to point out here, is that when the orginal Author dies, basicly extending copyrights is a tricky thing to do. Its questionable.
When a orginal Author dies , his original work/invention is still around. Aschcroft talks about works inside the public domain are not at issue here, only works which are not. Regarding such works/inventions i would suggest that if the orginal author has not made an arrangement like through a testament or so, the new owner of the copyrights must proove that the orginal Author has agreed to that, either by testament or whatever. If such papers cannot be given, then by default the work should be candidate for the public domain or better just like asset's go over into ownership by the government.
Robert