Tuesday, August 6, 2002

Go Larry Go! Feds file counterarguments in Constitutional copyright fight. The Feds have filed a response brief in the Eldred v. Ashcroft case, where Lawrence Lessig is arguing that the continuing extension of copyright (timed, not uncoincidentally, to extend copyright's lifespan every time it threatens to expire Mickey Mouse's earliest movies into the public domain) is unconstitutional. The constitution says that copyright exists as monopolies of limited times, granted to authors to promote the useful arts and sciences, but the continuing extension of copyright (now at author's life plus 95 years!) hinders the arts (by keeping us from being able to make new works from older works) and does not promote them (since retroactively extending Hemingway's copyright can't possibly provide him with an incentive to write new books -- he's dead.). Aaron's helpfully summed up the government's arguments in response: * All the lower courts agreed with us. * Times are different now and the extension act was designed to reflect that. Times are different for previously published works too, so being retroactive makes sense. * If the acts weren't retroactive, people would delay publishing things so they'd get a better deal. * We cannot have a copyright gap. The EU has a 75-year copyright law and we wouldn't want to lose all our content producers to Europe. * "Ultimately, petitioners wish to displace Congress's preference for copyright-based dissemination of works during the CTEA's prescribed proprietary term, and instead to allow indiscriminate exploitation by public domain copyists like petitioners. But the Constitution assigns such policy choices to Congress, not the courts." * Oh geez, they quoted the dictionary (a 1798 dictionary, no less!) definition of "limited" (as in "limited Times"). Isn't that the lawyer's equivalent of Godwin's Law? * It doesn't matter that extending copyright doesn't promote progress because only copyright is required to promote progress, not the limited times provision. 'The Framers did not require Congress to select "limited Times that promote" progress, any more than [...] allowing Congress to protect only "Authors that promote" progress, or "Writings that promote" progress.' Link (156k PDF) Discuss (via Aaron Swartz's Weblog) [Boing Boing Blog] 10:15:28 AM    comment

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