Eldred - why extend copyright protection? ...to be like Europe? - Congressman James Sensenbrenner was interviewed for NPR's story (no link to the story yet) on the Eldred case, which is being argued in the US Supreme Court today. He explained one reason for Congress' extensive support for the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension law was a desire to make the term of United States copyright the same as European terms. Sorry, but I'm not buying that (at the beep push 2 to hear a hollow reason for passing a law that is clearly the product of an influential industry needing a law to protect its economic interests).
I know all about the WIPO initiative and I know that a lot of somber faced people sit around and believe that it would be a good thing if all of the world's intellectual property laws were in perfect harmony. Of course, that isn't going to do much to stem the tide of rampant piracy that occurs in certain countries who shall remain nameless. But even if the Bono act was passed to make the US laws "similar to European laws" it misses the constitutional point. Our Constitution says Congress can pass laws related to copyrights and patents to "promote the useful arts and sciences" but only for "limited terms." European countries, I gather, are not similarly constrained.
If the European countries got together and said "let's make copyrights last forever" then we, in the US, couldn't pass a law that granted perpetual copyright protection just to be like Europe. So, is it permissible to just keep extending the protection everytime the current batch of copyrights are about to run out? That's what Eldred is all about. I find it highly ironic that we are now trying to harmonize our copyright laws with Europe. When this country was first formed we routinely ignored the copyrights of authors such as Charles Dickens, and as a result we had cheap access to great works of European literature (much to the dismay of the Europeans). Okay, it wasn't right. Dickens should have been paid and our country didn't act fairly. But did the world come to an end? No.
And the world isn't going to come to an end if the Supreme Court holds that the Bono act is unconstitutional; Disney will keep on suing people for using its intellectual property. They will just cite different provisions of law (like Trademark law) when they file their legal briefs. And, of course, the world won't come to an end if the court holds the act is constitutional either. People, like Eric Eldred who want to publish the works of Robert Frost on the web will just have to wait about 20 years. And then lobby against the inevitable effort to extend the copyright term again.
8:50:24 AM
Cheap access to the law - now, really! You would think that the US Supreme Court could afford to make transcripts of oral arguments available for free on the court's website. And do so shortly after the arguments take place.
8:14:39 AM
