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Lessig's Thoughts On Eldred v. Ashcroft Arguments
yokem_55 writes "Lawrence Lessig has updated his blog giving his thoughts on how the oral arguments for Eldred vs. Ashcroft went before the Supreme Court on Wednesday. He discusses the goals and methods he used in framing his arguments to convince the court to overturn the Sony Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, how he felt he did in presenting his arguments, and also provides some analysis on how he thinks the court might rule."
Why would someone fight to preserve a copyright that is not being used? It's too greedy.
All of this just causes people to look for ways to violate copyrights. Talk about inverse psychology. People will do whatever it is forbidden because it's tempting
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Ok, then explain this to me - if there were no copyrights, how would authors/musicians/artists/etc make money?
The founders had envisioned a world were copyrights are a tradeoff - for a particular works, certain freedoms allowed under other parts of the constitution (suich as the 1st ammendment) do not apply, in order to encourage them to create. But after a time, they go into the public domain. It might be old, but it sounds like solid reasoning to me.
Now, I agree that it has since been distorted. What we need (IMO) is repeal of those unconstituional retroactive copyright extensions, a shorter term for future copyrights, and (similiar to Russia) a law on the books making it illegal to create fair-use proof works.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
The government argument goes basically like this.
Who gets to decide what it takes to "promote", and what exactly "limited" means?
Congress, the Court?
Or, maybe you and I?
If Congress is doing wrong by the people, it is their RESPONSIBLITY to vote them out. Or so the story goes.
Fact is, the majority of voters are flat out stupid. Sad, but true.
Here's how stupid they are. I was at a party, 20 people or so. A friend underwent radiation for cancer and was told to stay away from their kids for 3-4 days. By the end of the arguments, the clear majority of the attendee's were convinced the reason was the kids would "get" radiation. Fact is, radiation kills the immune system and kids are loaded with germs.
That's a fairly clear insight into the way the "majority" of America "thinks". There's a reason propaganda works so well.
Sad to say, but the American system is broken and neither "judicial restraint" nor the people's recall of "congressional grace" (voting them out when they've gone evil on us) isn't going to save us.
Well the Court *can*.
What they'd do is establish a logical "test" which could be applied to decide what constitutes promotion (probably be called the Eldred Test). A good example of this is the Lemon Test, written by Justice Warren Burger in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), which can be applied to any future law concerning (in this case) school prayer.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
As the lead plaintiff in the case, I want to extend my greatest appreciation to Larry Lessig for taking on this case and arguing it so skillfully before the Supreme Court.
No doubt all of us will agonize over what we could have done better. But in the last four years we have raised the level of debate significantly on the role of copyright in the digital age. Today it would likely be impossible for legislation such as the CTEA to be passed.
What we need to do now is transfer some of the momentum from the Eldred case toward fighting some of the bad legislation beginning with the DMCA and including the Coble bills. After the Eldred decision, we can plan our next moves for new legislation that promotes the public interest.
Please support the public domain now by freely publishing your own ideas from your own website. Make new derivative works by digitizing works that are now in the public domain. Support the EFF, EPIC, Public Knowledge, Creative Commons, and Project Gutenberg and other online libraries.
And thanks for your support in all this!
Of course, when it comes time for Disney to give something back to the commons from which they've drawn so much, it's "different".
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
...Somebody ought to put together a little DVD collection of the earliest Mickey Mouse shorts that would now be public domain. And donate proceeds to the EFF.
A little thanks to Lessig, and a little fsck you to Disney.
Consider for a moment how the world would be if copyrights did not exist. The only direct result is that copies can freely be made.
By whom? you might ask... by the big *media houses* - by the very people you are complaining about right now.
Without copyright laws, an artist has no way to prosecute these people for stealing the fruit of their labor. An artist is an artist; not a well-entrenched CD/DVD stamping factory.
It is only through copyright laws that we can hope that the artist will receive some benefit from the reproduction of their works. Just because the current _implementation_ is broken doesn't imply that the _idea_ is unsound...
Unless you believe that physical goods (e.g. wheat, potatos, silicon chips) which actually take less effort *per item* to produce should also be freely "available"...
Section 8, Clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
What this says to me is that copyrights should be non-transferable. No signing away copyright to some big corporation unless you're doing "work for fire". This, and a sane policy that recognizes that authors don't have any incentive to create Writings and Discoveries after they're dead, would pretty much wrap it all up.
IMO, Congress isn't really in violation of the Constitution.
;)
Except that the DoJ has admitted that in their case they see congress having total discression of the "limited time" that a copyright has. So, this looks a lot like saying limit of x as x goes to infinity would be supported here by their argument
Whether or not the court strike down the law, it will be interesting to see how they interpret this limit in general.
And a quick comment-- Whether or not we win this battle, we need to be thankful for Lessig because he has devoted 4 years to this fight and without him, the fight might not have begun or be carried as far as it has been. If we lose here, we are in for a long fight, outside the courts, though activism, legislators, etc.
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> If they consistently pass laws which the people of the United States hate, they will lose their jobs.
Not so. Just as history is replete with documented reasons why socialism is a long term failure, it is also replete with reasons why democracy is also a failure.
Humanity is, on whole, a nasty affair.
First, the masses are out to get something for nothing. Those without jobs will vote for the likes of national health care based on a tax they don't pay. I believe the quote is "The downfall of democracy comes when the population discovers they control the purse strings."
Second, the masses generally feel that "it's not their problem". If it doesn't affect them personally, and tangibly, they simply don't care and will accept the status-quo.
Third, the masses generally assume that any activity that they don't participate in themselves, isn't worthy of others either.
In combination, the notion that the electorate can, or will, "fix" a government gone awry is simply preposterous.
Germany was a democracy -- Hitler still happend.
Unfortunately, the authors of the Constitution hadn't had the experience of history to know these were the facts.
The time horizon which determines what does and what does not get made is more like a year or two, certainly less than a decade. You don't really think any producer is going to decide what to do based on a 75-year payout, do you?
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
It is only through copyright laws that we can hope that the artist will receive some benefit from the reproduction of their works.
If there wasn't any copyright you would write your novel, print a shit load of copies distribute them fast and cheap. Grab your money run and write another. Just like now there would companys that would do just this for a cut of your book sales. You won't get a million bucks for that 400 page novel, but you can make a living. Most artist before 1900 didn't get rich, some didn't even make enough to live on the same goes for artist today. That doesn't stop them from creating new works. Most stuff won't be pirated, just the very popular stuff. If books, CDs, ect. are distributed cheaply enough the pirates won't be able to make enough money to be profitable. Today this is possiable, if you remove the roadblocks the MPAA and RIAA put up. If you had a good album you just send a copy to the radio station and they play it, it costs them nothing and you get a lot of exposure.
After all that I must say I'm not one of these people that hate the copyright law. I think it's needed for a limited time, but it's just getting outta hand. I've always liked the 14 years with a one time extension of 14 years. If you can't make money with that, then you should get a job at McDonalds.
Actually, sheet music itself is a vigorously enforced area of Copyright. There are many ways to write the same essential tune, just like the Perl motto of There Is More Than One Way To Do It. Sheet music authors (and player piano roll creators before them) rabidly protect against their unauthorized reproduction.
Think of the sheet music as an image which represents the music. The older sheets may in fact be turned out to public domain by now, but anything printed since the 50s is just as locked up as Winnie the Pooh drawings and Elvis Presley recordings.
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In other words the 'facto' of any copyright is the original publishing of the work. In other words at the time of the publishing of the work the creator got the right to use the work for X years and the public got the right to use the work after X years. In other words copyright laws give things to both the creator and the public. To, years later, delay the date at which the public gets the rights which they have had since the work was published in fact is taking something from the public after the fact
So in fact congress could set the copyright to whatever limited period they wished but what they couldn't have done is to apply that new limit to works that have already had their copyright length set.
As I said, there must be something that I am missing, because it seems so obvious. Can anybody explain?