Slashdot Mirror
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.
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).
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.
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
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.
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
"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
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.
You could vote them out, but would the ones replacing them be any better?
...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!
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
All things come to end.
Copyright is a monopoly. We either have sue every one for anti-trust or agree to finite period to allow the market to grow.
But for me...
Why is a copyright different than a patent?
They both protect an idea.
They both protect a market.
They both create a monopoly.
One you get for 95 years(+).
The Other you get for 17 year.
One their is no pruden to proof it yours -- just write it.
The Other you have to submit proof and first come first servered.
It seams that a copyright's 95 years is too long for some thing that has a lower threshold to meet.
It's not, "They own it, they should get to keep it forever", but "It's everybody's, but they should get to make some money from it for a while."
Your points about downloading MP3s and individuals not being prosecuted for copyright violations are irrelevant. It isn't whether they're prosecuted, it's whether the act is illegal.
P.S. Don't feel silly for not understanding this. A majority of the United States Congress is the same way. Or to quote H.L. Mencken (I think): "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his livelihood depends on him not understanding it."
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.)
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.
Things enter culture, Superman, Hulk Hogan, these things are household names, with stories that are now apart of the american culture, which means forever, someone would own our culture.
:))
I could never think that a world Bach, or Shakespeare were always benefitting someone financely somewhere, where you couldn't listen to Bach, or read Shakespeare without paying royaltes to there great-great uncles, who have little to no relationship to the work in question.
Plus this also limits derived works. Metallica uses Bach, Mozart, and other classical themes in all of there earlier works, and many authors also take characters from other works, look at Pip from South Park...These are definitly copyright infringments, but should these offense be illegal?
Taking someone elses work, or parts of there work, either for inspiration, or to accent your work, is a part of the human expression. Fan works, or pieces that are inspired by other works should not be subjected to archane copy laws. Its ok for an artist to use what is around them socially, like superman, and add that to their work, because superman is a part of who that artist is, and by extending copywrite law, we limit the amout of expression that artist has...
thank you
(sorry for the rant, and for the horrible english
~~~
Click here, you know you wanna!
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
To be trite, because our Constitution says that works can (note that it doesn't say they must) be copyrighted for "limited times" and "to promote the progress of Science and the useful Arts". For more explanation, read on.
The assumption you're making is that the author/creator made the work in a total vaccuum and has relied on nothing else to create whatever it is they made. However, in reality anyone who creates a piece of "intellectual property" has relied upon years and years of hard work by other people, and they have taken information and tactics from a rich and readily-available public domain. While their work may be fresh in a new and ingenuitive way, it still relies on stories, histories, facts, and even languages that were developed long before that person ever thought of anything of the sort.
The Founders of our country realized that it was necessary to encourage people to create new things, so they provided for copyrights to give people a limited monopoly over the things they create. However, the founders also realized the fact that "there is nothing new under the sun", and that subsequent people should be able to use that one creator's works/ideas just as he used the works/ideas of people who created things before him.
But that bound isn't set forever, despite the late Sonny Bono's desires. It's bound for limited times. And another thing I'd like to bring up, which I haven't seen much of at all, is the fact that the Constitution states that Congress may secure copyrights "for the author" -- not for his/her kids, or for their grandkids, or their great grand-neice twice removed. It seems to me right there that any law which says copyright can go past the life of an author is unconstitutional.
This is totally stupid. Thomas Jefferson believed companies should not even be considered entities unto themselves, and warned us that we'd be screwed if they did (hmmm, wonder when that's gonna happen). To look at one of the big ones involved in this whole issue, Disney, you can easily see that they have taken almost every single one of their stories directly from the public domain, bastardized it, and then slapped a copyright on it themselves so nobody else could use it. Being one of the biggest supporters of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, Disney obviously feels it has more of a right than anybody else to keep this stuff, which was public domain material to begin with, unto itself.
So what's you're point. Do you like paying for everything? Besides, it's not just about getting stuff for free, but about not abusing our right to have a rich and readily-available public domain -- a right which was envisioned by our Founding Fathers and enshrined in our Constitution.
What article are you talking about? What stuff exactly can be downloaded and where? I'm not clear on your point here.
Now you're just being ridiculous. People are sent "cease and desist" letters all the time by the MPAA and RIAA. Just do a search on these pages, or do a Google search. If you intend "prosecute" to mean with a federal attorney and all that crap, then perhaps you're right, but this is just as much prosecution, with even less due process than normal (which isn't much to begin with).
"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it." -- Ayn Rand
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
Theoretically, won't AOL still have the copyright on Europe,
Damn, that's some trick! I'd love to hold the copyright on an entire continent!
All your Europeans are belong to AOL!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
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.*
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.
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 basic premise of copyright law is to encourage the development of art for the benefit of mankind by providing incentive -- the right to profit from it-- to create it.
I have to disagree. Copyright law does not promote innovation and creation. The purpose of copyright law is to promote publication.
The exclusive rights clause was intended to address two problems:
1) Trade Secrets
2) Licensing, as opposed to publication, of writings.
Trade secrets are bad because they result in the loss of knowledge. For instance, Stradavarius violins are extremely fine musical instruments. Violin makers were notorious for tightly holding trade secrets. As a result, the knowledge of how to produce those superior instruments died with the instrument maker. Had a patent system been in place at the time, and had the violin makers chosen to accept a patent -- and disclose their manufacturing methods, then every violin manufactured today might be as good as a Stradavarius.
There is nothing in the patent laws that will help anyone to invent anything, and nothing that will make you decide to try to invent anything. The laws don't work that way, because they can't. The patent laws address a simple problem. Once a person invents something, they need a reason to publish their invention, rather than keep it as a trade secret.
Enter the patent. In exchange for disclosing the invention, the inventor receives a temporary monopoly over the exploitation of that invention. The temporary monopoly is the benefit to the inventor, and the benefit to the public is that after expiration of the patent, the public may make use of the knowledge.
This has nothing to do with the inciting of invention, and everything to do with the inciting of disclosure. Patents incite disclosure, not invention.
Similarly, the original copyright statutes covered books, and in particular, maps and charts. The specific inclusion of maps and charts is interesting, because it illustrates the true purpose of copyright.
Maps and charts were the "software" of their time. A sea chart cost a tremendous amount of money to develop -- measured in terms of exploration and expeditions -- and practically nothing to duplicate. The problem was that mapmakers, in order to prevent copying of their works, only would issue the maps to sea captains under restrictive licenses. Maps were being created, but progress in accurate maps was not being made because mapmakers could not compare their maps to each other and make corrections.
Copyright law was intended to sweep aside licensing terms on written works by offering a replacement -- in exchange for the act of publishing the work -- that is, making it available for public use -- the author would receive a temporary monopoly over the printing of the work.
The purpose of copyright is not to promote the creation of works. It doesn't do that. Copyright does not guarantee the right to profit off of works. The vast majority of copyright holders never make a penny from their work. Instead, copyright is intended to promote the publication of works. That's all that copyright law can ever do. The idea that stronger copyright laws are needed to promote the creation of new works is nonsense. That isn't what copyright law does, and it isn't what it was ever intended to do.
You'er excluding the biggest one, santa. Can you imagine having to pay a license fee to dress up as santa and stuff presents under your xmas tree as your kids snuck a look?
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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?
Did you ever think about why Elementary School takes 8 years but High School takes just 4? Obviously it all comes down to money.
An interesting smear, but you are aware that Bush has spoken strongly in favor of a strict `original intent' interpretation of the Constitution, and against such word games, right?
This is one of the largest factors differentiating the current administration from the previous one, by the way.
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.
They are probably being harder on Lessig because they are highly sympathetic-- and until the transcript comes out, we really won't a good account of the actual event. The Court also seems concerned that they can't cash out the retroactive bits of CTEA without nullifying the whole law, which is really scary to them since it means that they are *removing* years from the copyright on works created after 1998. They are also concerned that this current case would affect a 1976 law (and I have to ask why *that* particular retro-extension has never been challenged!).
Also, please remember that a lot of very important voices in this debate have all filed briefs with the Court in order to make persuasive arguments on behalf of one side or the other. The whole case hardly comes down to a debate held in under an hour and a half.
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.
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...
Here's the problem. Elections never end. Even after you win the November vote, you *have* to keep the election machinery oiled as well as start stockpiling cash *now* to meet the spending needs of the next session. What's a senate campaign cost? $2M average, $20M in places like NYC and Cal?
These kinds of costs (war chests, constant campaigning) are expensive. So you have to constantly solicit donors, aka special interests to get the money. They expect legislative concierge service, which they get.
I don't see any way out because the supply of congressional seats is limited to 535 total (100 sentate, 435 house), and we all know how supply-demand works. I'd guess the best thing to do would be to add 3 new senators per state and double the number of house reps. More seats = more representation @ lower cost.
Of course this would be a procedural nightmare in the congress, which could be worse than the problem it solves, but it would dilute the amount of money spent and increase representation.
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.
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.
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.
I have a sneaking suspicion that O'Connor is a raving hypocrite when it comes to this remark. It is quite difficult to separate "law" and "policy". Infact, many legal theories and legal tests have notions of policy embedded into them. I find her remark in this case extremely disingenuous.
Even if you take the remark at face value, you still have the problem that the laws under dispute codify public policy concerns. If it's a constitutional question, then it is the role of the Supremes to weigh in on the matter. What a particular justice chooses to call it is remarkably irrelevant.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
And yet he signed the US Patriot Act, which directly spits on the Constitution in so many ways. Has he vetoed anything since he's been in office ? or is he going to be known from here on out as George "Rubber Stamp" Bush.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
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.
I welcome you to provide even a single example of how you believe USA PATRIOT has violated the US Constitution
Habeas Corpus and if you don't beleive me, perhaps you should ask Jose Padilla or his lawyer.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
"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."
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.)"
I don't. Quite the opposite. If the justices are going to rule against the law because it would invalidate other laws, that's wrong. It shouldn't matter how many laws are effected when deciding if some particular legislation is or is not unconstitutional. Choosing to stay as-is because it would be difficult to fix the law is a horrible way to judge your current legal framework.
jello.
aka aron.
Actually, no.
Abdullah al-Muhajir (you don't call Muhammad Ali `Cassius Clay', do you?) is being held as an enemy combatant, something which has nothing at all to do with USA PATRIOT. It's not anything new, either -- those waging war on the US, including US citizens, have been subject to military jurisdiction since the earliest days of this republic, a practice which was upheld most recently in the 1942 US Supreme Court case Ex Parte Quirin.
See this journal entry for details on the Supreme Court's ruling in Quirin.
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?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Please take note of this USA Today article in which Paul Wolfowitz is quoted as saying
"I don't think there was actually a plot beyond some fairly loose talk and (Al Muhajir's) coming in here obviously to plan further deeds."
It's pretty clear (read the government's court filings) that this case is intended to establish a precedent that the executive branch can-based only on its word and with no judicial review-confine an individual in a military prison indefinitely without trial.
If you believe in basic human rights, that concept really ought to scare you.
On the other hand, I will agree that this has nothing to do with the USA Patriot act. :-)
Well, Mr. al-Muhajir is right now receiving a hearing in a New York courtroom to determine if the government has enough evidence to hold him as a combatant -- if they can't convince a federal judge that they do, he will be remanded to civilian custody, where he will have all the rights accorded to those accused of crimes in civilian jurisdiction, including the right to be charged with a crime within 48 hours, or else released.
We can argue about whether this is how the system should work, but it cannot reasonably be claimed either that this is something new (as it has been practiced as long as the republic has existed, and was upheld by the Supreme Court sixty years ago), or that this is out of line with the intent of the founders (as both Jefferson and Madison, the authors of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights respectively) used this authority to imprison port saboteurs working with French and British privateers during their terms as president.
Go learn to code, then come back and tell us when a variable of type "int" can ever be greater than "MAXINT".
;-)
DUH to you too
What would Lemmy do?
Abdullah al-Muhajir (you don't call Muhammad Ali `Cassius Clay', do you?) is being held as an enemy combatant, something which has nothing at all to do with USA PATRIOT
On the contrary, the suspension of Habeaus Corpus and the passing of the US Patriot act are symptoms of the same disease. The following is my list symptoms of an erroding Democracy.
Freedom of association: The government may monitor religious and political groups without evidence of criminal activity.
Right to liberty: Americans may be jailed without being charged or being able to confront witnesses against them.
Freedom from unreasonable searches: The government may search and seize Americans' papers and effects without probable cause to aid terrorism investigation.
Freedom of speech: The government may prosecute librarians, telecommunication company officials and anyone else who reveals they have received a subpoena for records related to the terrorism investigation.
Right to legal representation: The government may monitor penal communications between attorneys and clients, and deny lawyers to Americans accused of crimes.
Right to a speedy and public trial: The government may jail Americans indefinitely without a trial.
Freedom of information: The government has closed once-public immigration hearings, secretly detained hundreds of people without charges, and has encouraged bureaucrats to resist requests for public records under the Freedom of Information Act.
Read This , it goes into more detail.
a practice which was upheld most recently in the 1942 US Supreme Court case Ex Parte Quirin.
The difference of course is we were at war in 1942. Regardless of what GW Bush says, we are not at war, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, not the President or FoxNews. GW Bush will have to do better than "He's a bad man" to convince me that Abdullah al-Muhajir deserves to be held without trial or access to a lawyer or his family.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
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.
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.
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.
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)
You make a lot of claims about USA PATRIOT here, none of which you back up with language from the act, but more generally, you don't explain how a bill which only extends to organized terrorism practices which were already ruled constitutional when they were employed against organized crime by the Kennedys forty years ago could be considered a new restriction on your rights.
The government may monitor religious and political groups without evidence of criminal activity.
Something which it could always do, but voluntarily refrained from doing (a mistake) after the Church Committee hearings. At no point was this illegal. It's important to note that what we are discussing here is observation of public announcements such as newspaper articles, web sites, and public speeches -- before this policy change, for example, it was against the rules for an FBI agent looking for al Qaeda to type `al Qaeda' into Google.
The government may search and seize Americans' papers and effects without probable cause to aid terrorism investigation.
Simply untrue. See the more extended discussion of this claim in the journal entry linked above.
The government may prosecute librarians, telecommunication company officials and anyone else who reveals they have received a subpoena for records related to the terrorism investigation.
No, the government may seek a gag order from a judge in such cases, something which was already extensively done in RICO cases.
The government may monitor penal communications between attorneys and clients,
After notifying the suspect, with the supervision of a judge, etc. -- but this is a practice that began long before USA PATRIOT (and in fact USA PATRIOT says nothing on the matter), and, again, has been used in organized crime cases for decades -- just ask John Gotti's lawyer.
and deny lawyers to Americans accused of crimes.
Again, simply untrue. No American accused of a crime can be (or has been) denied a lawyer. Americans accused of waging war against the country can be held until the end of hostilities without being charged (see below), but this is a practice which has existed since the earliest days of the republic, and has been repeatedly upheld by the Supreme Court, most recently in 1942.
The government may jail Americans indefinitely without a trial.
This is the same charge as the previous one, and is equally untrue.
The government has closed once-public immigration hearings,
Something which could already be done (and was in a number of cases). Immigration to this country is a privilege, not a right, and the Constitution provides no guarantee that immigration hearings will be public.
secretly detained hundreds of people without charges
Not true -- provide a cite for this.
and has encouraged bureaucrats to resist requests for public records under the Freedom of Information Act.
Again, provide a cite for this.
The difference of course is we were at war in 1942.
Go read the decision in Quirin, which is linked above. The power to detain those caught attacking the US does not depend on a declared war being in effect, for reasons which should be obvious -- by your logic, had we captured any Japanese pilots during the attack on Pearl Harbor, we would have had to release them, since we did not declare war until the following day.
More generally speaking, the vast majority of the wars the US has fought in, from Jefferson's campaign against the Barbary Pirates through the Gulf War were not declared wars in the sense you discuss. Are you seriously suggesting that this means we did not take prisoners of war in any of them?
Unless you know something that I don't (my information comes from the documents at findlaw.com), the administration's primary position at this hearing is that that they don't have to provide any evidence, and that the court should give complete deference to the President's judgment.
In the past, courts have upheld a relatively low burden of proof in such cases -- there were a spate of cases similar to Quirin at different points. Mr. al-Muhajir's lawyer is arguing that a higher standard should be required, which is a reasonable request to make.
The judge will decide. If either side disagrees with the judge's decision, there will be an appeal. That's how the system works.
Lets assume for a moment you are correct, if the government already had all the powers it needed to fight terrorism, and as you have been saying, the US Patriot Act really didn't change anything, then why do we need it at all ?
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
To repeat what I said before, USA PATRIOT did two main things: first, it extended to organized terrorism practices which had already been ruled constitutional (and codified in law by RICO) decades earlier against organized crime, and second, it reversed voluntary restrictions on actions by the executive branch which that branch had adopted after the Church Commission hearings, and which that branch could already have dropped at any time.
Do we need it? That's certainly a question where there is room for lively debate -- I happen to think that not employing tactics against al Qaeda which we are already employing against the mafia, and which have already passed constitutional muster would be a mistake, and potentially a very constly one, with the price measured in lives.
Terrorism was against the law prior to the US Patriot Act and 9/11. Committing a Terrorist Act makes one a criminal and belonging to a Terrorist Organization is the no different from belonging to Mafia Crime Family. If there were laws already on the books which cover criminals and by extension terroists and terrorist orgizations and these laws had already passed constitutional muster, again, what exactly do we need the US Patriot Act for ? Besides motivation, what is the difference between a terrorist (motivated by politics) and a common criminal (motivated by greed) that required the passage of the US Patriot Act ?
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
USA PATRIOT extends these practices (which were already ruled constitutional as part of RICO) to organized terror organizations for the same reason.
I am still unconvinced the US Patriot Act was neccessary or even wise. However, I hope for all of our sake you are correct and I am wrong. I hope we do not live to regret the decisions our government has made of late.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development