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Kahle v Ashcroft Appeal Filed
An anonymous reader writes "Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive has announced that the appeal of Kahle vs. Ashcroft has been filed.
Here is the appeal.
Kahle vs. Ashcroft concerns the constitutionality of changing from an opt-in copyright system (which existed for almost 200 years in the US) to the current opt-out system, where every doodle on a piece of paper is copyrighted for 95 years. Yes, they used the word doodle in their appeal.
Previous stories here, here, and here."
"Kahle vs. Ashcroft concerns the constitutionality of changing from an opt-in copyright system (which existed for almost 200 years in the US) to the current opt-out system, where every doodle on a piece of paper is copyrighted for 95 years. Yes, they used the word doodle in their appeal. Previous stories here, here, and here.""
Does the constitution really indicate a preference?
This "transfer" of copyrights to a heir or something is stupid too, they didn't come up with the damn idea, why the hell should I pay THEM? Greedy brats.
Was the old opt-in copyright law in some way broken?
Of course! It impeded corporations' God-given right to squeeze every last dollar out of citizens/customers/consumers! So it obviously had to go....
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
I thought present copyright was supposed to last for 95 years after the death of the author. There is a big difference between that and what is written in the post. Anyone care to clarify this?
-GameMaster
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
Well, changing the system isn't the issue here (although it's undoubtedly the goal). The issue here is whether the change from opt-in to opt-out was constitutional.
Looking at the constitution, you'd hardly think it's an issue:
But there's of course more to the constitution than just the text itself. It's how the Supreme Court interprets that text which is important.
In Eldred vs. Ashcroft, which is very much the predecessor to this case (Larry Lessig being involved with both), the Supreme Court basically said that the Sonny Bono copyright extension act was OK, since it didn't alter "the traditional contours of copyright protection".
So, what they're arguing here is basically a follow-up on that: "Well, what about the opt-in system? Didn't that change the contours of traditional copyright?"
I'd say it's a long shot. But I'm thankful for them trying.
The problem usually comes from vague definitions -- what exactly constitutes a significant portion of a work, for example? This ambiguity has real repurcussions. For example, scholarly articles and research in popular music are often unable to quote the lyrics of the songs under examination, even though one would think that would fall under comment and criticism.
As for 1st Amendment issues, there are none. If Congress tried to prohibit the press for reporting on copyrighted works, there would be an issue. But your freedom of speech is hardly infringed if you're not allowed to copy someone else's published "speech", especially with the fair use provisions of copyright law covering pretty much any reasonable use that could be considered protected speech.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
It could be lowered back down again to life of the author + 50 years, but would be inpractical to lower it further.
The reason for this is the Berne Convention, which states that all signed parties had to provide at least a minimum of lifetime + 50. Any nation can provide more but not less.
The U.S. would not only have to pass legislation to change it. But they would have to back out of the Berne convention. Backing out of the Berne convention would (I think) have the side effect of getting the plantifs what they want, and returning the U.S. to an opt-in copyright system.
IANAL, so I very well may be wrong about that, but even if I am, it would at least remove one major hurdle to getting the U.S. back to an opt-in system.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
Then the solution would be to have two seperate torrents with one seeder offfering the first half of the file and the other seeder offering the second half. Then the recipient can combine them together. If so, that's his doing - not the seeders who were merely sharing partial works for commentary (nor the non-seed torrents that are merely distributing very small portions of the file and not the entire file).
But hey, I'm just rambling.
I think a fair solution would be unlimited opt-in. You need to register your copyright to begin with which gets you five or ten years, and then renew your copyright once every five years for a fee of, say, a dollar. You can renew for as long as you like (which would keep Mickey safe and sound) but if your copyright on a work isn't worth a few minutes (we could just have a web based renewal system) and a dollar once every five years, then let the public have at it. I think Lawrence Lessig promoted something similar to this in Free Culture.
kThis too, will end.
A better definition would be the legal recognition of unnatural property rights. There is nothing natural about giving someone rights to an idea. They haven't created anything unique. All they have done is discovered something. We don't give someone who discovers a gold mine perpetual right to that mine. They have to pay taxes on both the profits from that property and property taxes on the land itself. If the property taxes aren't paid then the land and mining rights revert to the government (ie you and me). If this actually happened with copyrights then it would be a much better system. All the copyrights deemed not commercialy viable would lapse into the public domain and the government could be reaping billions in profit off of taxing commercial "intellectual property" and investing it in stopping trivial patents and copyrights from being granted.
The difference between the opt-in and the opt-out is a matter of dealing with one of the properties of getting a copyright, authorship, which translates to prior art evidence.
The opt-out still doesn't enable opt-in in those cases it is used.
Its really quite simple, once a work is done and published, it creates prior art and this inherently prevents another from comming along and claiming ownership.
the fundamental difference between opt-in and opt-out is the default respect given to the authorship.
For Kyle and those like him creating an archive (ie google regarding usenet archives), which itself has public and historic value, there should be a copyright exception allowed, as it actually helps to establish and provide proof of prior art.
As such public archiving should be considered "fair use."
100 years ago, free speach as you understand it did not exist, police could legally beat a confession out of you, and segregation was legal. The reason all of that changed was because of those darn legislating judges you are so upset about. I'm not saying activist judges are always right, but there is a reason that the judiciary is a separate branch of government, not answerable to the other two.
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
Congress' power of impeachment cannot be used to remove a judge simply because that judge's decisions are unpopular, any more than it can impeach the president for being of the opposite political party. There must be an actual crime, and even if it is proven, it must be of such a nature that it justifies removing the judge from the bench.
Even if I wanted to, I couldn't argue with your assertion that the Supreme Court is result-oriented, but I would argue that the biggest problem is not the court "usurping" congress' authority, but rather allowing congress to expand its own authority way beyond what was intended in the Constitution. The commerce clause, which is the basis for the vast majority of federal law, has been so stretched out of shape that can (& does) cover almost any conceivable subject of legislation.
An almost unlimited Congress scares me a lot more than shoddy reasoning on the Supreme Court. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that there would me much less occasion for "judicial legislating" if there were fewer wide-ranging and poorly-drafted laws.
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
Actually, as I understand it the AUSFTA won't allow you to reduce the copyright levels below what Australia's 'upgraded' ours to, which are now the same as yours. Life+70's where it's at, unless Kahle wins. Personally, I'm barracking for him, but I have a habit of liking the loser.
But in the case of the Berne Convention, you're slightly wrong, as I understand it. You have to respect life+50 for other countries', but you can have your own lower limit for your own country's copyrights. This proviso was put in to alow the US to sign without changing their laws---strange place this world is!
Look out!
Opt-out has its good sides - it avoids the problem of mistakenly releasing something or having to clutter everything with copyright notices. Opt-in in itself isn't the problem. The problem is the form it has taken, where protection has gotten longer and longer.
I'd have no problem with opt-out if it was structured differently. Say, copyright on a work that doesn't either have a copyright notice, OR have been registered expires after a short amount of time after publication - say 5 years - unless copyright is registered in the meantime. It would mean that even if you couldn't prove the publication date, if you receive a work and it is not registered, you KNOW it will be out of copyright in 5 years unless there is registration at the end of that period. That's not much of a burden.
If you then further requires all work to be registered to get longer protection than, say, 20 years from publication, and be renewed every 20 years after that up to a maximum, then works that have commercial value can remain protected, while work where the owner loses interest or "disappears" will still enter the public domain relatively quickly.
It would give you automatic protection, the ability to easily prevent "mistakes" where you released something without a notice, and the ability to get protection up to 20 years without a registration by placing a notice on your work, or significantly longer if you bother with the paperwork.
There are many ways of making both opt-in and opt-out work. The problem is that the people with significant investments in copyrighted works aren't interested, and they spend fortunes on lobbying.