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US Supreme Court Upholds Removal of Works From Public Domain
langelgjm writes "While much of the web is focused on the SOPA and PIPA blackout, supporters of the public domain today quietly lost a protracted struggle that began back in 2001. The Supreme Court, in a 6-2 decision, rejected the argument that Congress did not have the power to convey copyright upon works that were already in the public domain. The suit was originally filed to challenge provisions that the U.S. adopted when signing the TRIPs agreement. Justices Breyer and Alito dissented, arguing that conveyed copyright on already existing works defied the logic of copyright law. Justice Kagan recused herself. The text of the opinions is available here (PDF)."
this court won't do to rob ordinary citizens of property?
Currently hooked on AMP
So, if Congress so wishes... they can apply copyright to anything in the public domain.
Shakespear here we come!
The fifth amendment prohibits the taking of private property for public use without just compensation. We need an amendment that prohibits the taking of public property for private use without just compensation.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
"Um, hello, I own the rights to 'Snow White' and all the properties of the Brothers Grimm. We need to discuss your flagrant infringing use of my client's intellectual property dating back to the very founding of your company."
Dog is my co-pilot.
The copyright terms should be fixed at the moment a work is granted copyright. Future laws should have no power to change when an existing work is transferred to the public domain.
In these specific cases however I'd vote on the side of the court. The copyright terms granted to the works were those in effect in the country they were produced, so should be respected.
Retroactively extending copyright should be outlawed and all extensions should be revoked.
It's sort of strange that of all the international treaties, this is the one that is going to be enforced in the US. /not that I agree with it at all.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
The US has created a system that is terrified that someone, somewhere, is not making money in perpetuity on property they did not create.
Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos
"What do all men with power want? More power." -- The Oracle (from The Matrix).
Ideas are the most valuable commodity on the market today. Maintaining and increasing wealth is a simple matter of maintaining and increasing control over that which is valuable.
There is no principle of justice or reason which will not be trampled underfoot in the name of increasing the power of the aristocracy.
The only way to get the aristocracy to treat the rest of the world reasonably is to force them to do so. Appeals to fairness or practicality will not make them budge. The rest of us have a numbers advantage but that only helps when we are organized enough to use it. If you want reasonable copyright terms, you will have to force their hand. Count on it.
Seriously, WTF?
Don't we have something in the constitution about, I dunno, ex post facto laws?
What about all those people who copied or derived from formerly public domain works that are now under copyright again?
Did anyone notice the two dissenters were appointed to the court by President George W. Bush?
As Heinlein said:
"But I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; If I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am responsible for everything I do."
("The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress", 1966)
BitTorrent exists for a purpose.
Just for fun, let's get congress to copyright all of the Supreme Court's Rulings, and give them to Disney.
If they want to research something, then given them Pay For View and they can listen to Donald Duck act out their old rulings.
Maybe that would give them some insight into what they just did to the public.
Well, that's it. I no long feel guilty about copyright infringement. If you can't keep your end of the bargain, why the fuck should I?
Looks like I'll have to change my sig, too.
I explicitly release the above into the public domain.
Actually, you'll get into a legal fight and whoever has the most money to throw at congress will wind up owning both versions.
hasn't been in the Senate since 2004.
Dog is my co-pilot.
This extends copyright protection, in the US, to works still under copyright protection abroad and brings the US in line with Berne Treaty; essentially providing the same protection to foreign authors as it does to US. Once those copyrights expire the works will revert to the public domain. SCOTUS appears to leave open the argument that continual extension of copyright would be unconstitutional; in this ruling they said Congress has the right to bring US law inline with treaties and the Constitution's copyright provision does not prevent that. Congress should have done that when they ratified the teary but didn't; and that doesn't prevent them from later doing so.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Don't the assholes at Google have way more money than the assholes at Disney?
Google has a nice market cap, but otherwise it isn't necessarily wealthier than the media corps. Consider revenue; Google had $35.76B of revenue during the previous 12 months. Disney alone had $40.89B. The combined revenue of Time Warner, Disney, Sony and DreamWorks was $159.53B.
Incidentally, those media names figure prominently at OpenSecrets as big contributors. DreamWorks in particular punching well above its weight. About 95% of it goes to one party. It is left as an exercise to the reader to discover which one.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Your legal system is as hilarious to watch as your government. Put the two together and it is just comedy gold.
Is your country currently accepting refugees from our legal system?
I think most folks have missed the sublty in the decision and the dissent. As my submission on this topic didn't make it, I'll just repost my view here.
Although the jist of the argument is if congress has the right to restore or extend copyright protection to works that were prior legally in the public domain in the USA before the treaty was in effect to come into compliance with the treaty, that wasn't the whole argument. The Berne Convention and the Uruguay Rounds allowed for a country to have restricted terms for works that had restored copyright to account for any disruption pulling things out of the public domain might cause. Apparently, the US congress decided to just do a blanket restoration of rights instead of any restricted terms which were allowed by the Treaty (specifically article 18 of the Berne Convention).
The subtle legal argument was that if by granting blanket restoration of rights congress overstepped its authority granted by the constitution by not restricting the rights as much as was allowed, but still compliant with the convention. In a disenting opinion authored by Justices Breyer and Alito voices the view that this legal implementation "does not serve copyright's traditional public ends, namely the creation of monetary awards that motivate the create activity of authors", but only grants its restored copyrights only to works already produced. Whereas just providing for minimal restored rights allowed by the treaty would still promote the activity of future authors by giving them the global opportunities for monetary rewards that would come by international copyright harmonization.
It's subtle, but an important distinction that, unfortuantly, seems to have been botched by the majority of the court (in my opinion). It's clear to me that the court generally agrees that congress has this specific power to change copyright in the context of this treaty (under the promotion of authorship provisions), but disagrees on if Congress actually stepped across the line on this specific implementation law. It isn't about compliance with an international treaty in general (the Parent/poster didn't make this mistake, but several other posters did), as it is certainly the court's perogative to say that the signing the treaty was against the consitution, if that were the case.
...then why aren't we charging copyright holders Property Tax?
SCOTUS is supposed to overturn laws that are unconstitutional.
They are NOT supposed to overturn laws just because they are bad.
SCOTUS ruled that congress putting public domain items back under copyright is NOT unconstitutional... because it isn't.
You may not care for the outcome, but the Supreme court isn't there to prevent Congress from doing stupid shit. The only people you have to blame for this is Congress and whichever President didn't veto it.
paintball
Disney literally built their empire on PD works. Most of their best-loved and most successful movies come from work that predates copyright--their original classics (Snow White, Pinocchio, and Cinderella), the films that sparked their revival in the late 80s/early 90s (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin), and many others.
FUCK THEM, and the lawmakers they buy. Read that old paper you swore to uphold: Article I, Section 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"
Key words there:
Fuckers, it's not even halfway down the page. PD did exactly what it was supposed to do: things that weren't in copyright were available for (in this case) Disney to do wonderful things with. Now, art will be relatively inaccessible from 1928 on.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
On the other hand, two can play that game. Whaddaya say that we all get together collectively and decide that all that crap the RIAA and MPAA keeps sputzing on about would really be better for everyone if it were simply "community property". Then by the (appropriately expanded and annexed) notion of "Eminent Domain" we simply appropriate it for the community-- legally, of course-- you know, the American way-- and then we'll all own the copyrights on it and nobody will have to worry about anything else the RIAA or MPAA ever says or does again. Which will leave them free to pursue more lofty pursuits, such as beating up homeless people or kicking disabled people in wheelchairs or something. I mean, it really would work out better for everybody that way.
...putting public domain items back under copyright is NOT unconstitutional... because it isn't.
Well, at least two justices disagree with you, so it's reasonable to argue that they made the wrong decision here.
This is what the consitution has to say regarding copyright:
The Congress shall have Power... 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.
To me this means that any copyright law which does not promote the progress of science and/or useful Arts is unconstitutional. So you would have to make the case that moving these works out of the public domain accomplishes that.
That's not how ex post facto works. Ex post facto would be:
Make something "retroactively" illegal, and as a consequence of making the said thing illegal, convict you of a crime for something that was legal to do when it was done.
Only if you can be punished for the copying that you did whilst it was still in the public domain.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
No. This would be ex post facto: Something that was once in the public domain, and legal for anyone to copy, and you copied it when legal, say, in 1990. Congress passed a law in 2012 that not only made it illegal to copy it in the future but retroactively made your 1990 act illegal. That would be unconstitutional. That is not what happened. That said, there are constitutional questions (just read the dissent).
SCOTUS ruled that congress putting public domain items back under copyright is NOT unconstitutional... because it isn't.
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.
1) It doesn't promote Science or useful Arts. It subtracted from them, by taking something out of the public domain.
2) If something can be placed back under copyright, it's not a limited Time.
That's unconstitutional enough for me.
You are not merely wrong, but do not understand the basis of the Constitution. The Constitution exists to PROHIBIT the Federal government doing ANYTHING that it doesn't SPECIFICALLY empower it to do. You don't have to find a place in the Constitution where it says the Federal government CANNOT do X. You only have to establish that nothing in it that says it CAN do X.
The relevant empowering section in this case reads:
"The Congress shall have Power ... 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"
It means what it says. A law specifies how long copyright lasts - the time MUST be limited. Then when the copyright runs out, the work passes into the public domain. There is no Constitutional basis for then magically re-instituting copyright after it has run out, by passing some new law after this event which WOULD HAVE resulted in a longer period of copyright, had the new law existed at the time the work was originally published.
In fact the Constitution specifically says "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." The definition of Ex Post Facto is "Formulated, enacted, or operating retroactively."
I realize that the Constitution is no longer used as anything more than toilet paper nowadays. BUT SOME OF US NOTICE. Yes, we notice.
No, but if someone got the work as public domain (with a public domain notice attached) and were never told that it had magically become NOT public domain, then sent someone else a copy (believing it to STILL be public domain), that is about half-way between entrapment and ex post facto. This gets even WORSE when businesses (big or small) USED these public domain works as part of their identity (logos, etc) or murchandise (t-shirts, pins, stickers, emblems). Imagine if snow white, pocahontas and cinderella suddenly became owned by some guy in Florida, Disney would be SCREWED if they continued selling those before finding out.
How the hell do they expect to inform every person that has a copy of the ex-public-domain works and tell them "By the way, your logo is now illegal because the clouds you used in the background are now copyrighted".
I agree with you that this is not a good law, and I'm certainly not pleased with the direction that copyright law is heading. However...
It means what it says. A law specifies how long copyright lasts - the time MUST be limited. Then when the copyright runs out, the work passes into the public domain. There is no Constitutional basis for then magically re-instituting copyright after it has run out, by passing some new law after this event which WOULD HAVE resulted in a longer period of copyright, had the new law existed at the time the work was originally published.
This is a very specific and very narrow interpretation of the Constitution that you are making. The power given by the quote you cited is much broader than just allowing a specific law. In addition to the powers specifically granted, Congress has (and must have) the power to employ laws necessary to achieve those goals, even if they're not specifically called out. Furthermore, there's no legal requirement that Congress make particularly wise or effective laws. As long as the law reasonably "promote[s] the Progress of Science and useful Arts," it's probably Constitutional, even if there would be a better way to achieve that goal.
I'd certainly like to shorten copyright terms (although this is a more complicated issue than it's often given credit for), but it's not hard to imagine a retroactive copyright law that does qualify as providing "limited Times." A 70 year term that takes effect an arbitrary time after creation is technically a limited time. One could argue whether it's truly limited, but you could add a limit on the time before the start of the enforcement to achieve that.
It's already been established that extensions are legal as long as the terms are limited at each point. This is unfortunate, but I think the logic is correct. This is something that needs to be corrected at the Congressional level.