Eldred Attracts Heavyweight Supporters 230
dipfan writes: "Opening briefs have now been filed with the Supreme Court for the Eldred v Ashcroft copyright case, arguing that the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act is unconstitutional. The anti-extension case has attracted some big name supporters, including Intel, and Nobel prize winning economist Milton Freidman, who argue it is "highly unlikely that the economic benefits from copyright extension" outweigh the additional costs, and that copyright extension reduces consumer welfare. (Previous coverage of the case on /. here and here)"
GNU files amicus curiae brief (Score:5, Informative)
Also, the FSF filed a "friend of the court" brief [gnu.org], though if, like me, you are not a lawyer, you might rather just read the press release [gnu.org].
I'm hopeful (Score:5, Informative)
This is probably the most important copyright case of our generation. The government has characterized retroactive copyright extension as a "national tradition", and if this case fails, the result will be that Congress will be given the go-ahead to continue the "tradition", and the result will be perpetual copyright. The entire idea of a public domain of ideas will be destroyed.
Eldred is our last, best chance to prevent perpetual copyright. It's a tremendous effort, the best contemporary legal writing that I've EVER seen. I urge all Slashdot readers to read through the opening brief. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the issues behind copyright extension.
Who's who (Score:5, Informative)
Eagle Forum/Phyllis Schlafly
Milton Friedman
Hal Roach Studios
Intel
Wendell Berry
Ursula K. Leguin
Barry Lopez
Peter Matthiessen
David Foster Wallace
National Writers Union
The United States Public Policy Committee for the Association of Computing Machinery
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
The Apache Software Foundation
The Domain Name Rights Coalition
The Center for The Public Domain
Public Knowledge, The Digital Future Coalition
The Public Domain Research Corporation
The Center for Book Culture
The Computer and Communications Industry Association
The Consumer Electronics Association
Re:Problem... (Score:3, Informative)
(The arguments against severability are that Congress wouldn't have passed just the future extension, all the lobbying was for the extension of existing works, and the Court shouldn't be in the business of rewriting flawed legislation.)
Re:If ever there was a case that should win. (Score:3, Informative)
That he didn't recuse himself shows a very serious lack of integrity among the Justices. Who knows what conflict of interest they'll allow next?
Re:If ever there was a case that should win. (Score:3, Informative)
This is addressed nicely in the ecomomists' brief. The Disney argument might go like this: "if we get this windfall, we'll spend it on new creative projects."
The economists point out that if a profit-maximizing corporation had a potentially profitable project, they could seek funding from banks or investors. If the corporation has more money than profitable projects, they should invest those excess resources on something else.
A starving artist, they acknowledge, might not be able to get the same kind of investment that Disney can get. But for the starving artist to get anything out of extension, they would have to already own a copyright that was about to expire. And that, they point out, is unlikely.
Excellent read on copyright at k5 (Score:3, Informative)
The speech was made over 160 years ago.
Re:If ever there was a case that should win. (Score:5, Informative)
That Thomas and Scalia should have recused themselves is absolutely obvious to me. And I don't say that just that it's Bush involved and I dislike him (as an aside, I never liked Gore either). The fact is that the court acted disgracefully in a very important ruling. You can't forget that -- it's not just the effect of the ruling, but that they have revealed that on truly tough cases (not just subtle, but personally tough for those Justices) they will not act fairly. They do not deserve respect, and they do not deserve to be given the benefit of the doubt. They only deserve that when there is no evidence to the contrary, but evidence has been presented, and we need to look at the evidence whenever it's present.
(Besides this, the volunteer premise is false: Bush's campaign was flush with money. What may have appeared to be volunteer work seldom was. Lots of people worked on that campaign for purely monetary reasons. Get-out-the-vote door-to-door campaigners were being done by employees. Phone soliciters were payed. Everyone was on the payrole. It was not some grassroots campaign done by true supporters. It was a corporate campaign, from top to bottom, for a corporate president. Sure, it had the appearance of legitimacy, but corporations learned to fake that a long time ago.)
DMCA doesn't protect PD works (Score:3, Informative)
I know of no DRM systems which provide for expriation of protection.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides no protection against circumvention for works that have fallen into the public domain. From 17 USC 1201 [cornell.edu]: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title" (emphasis by yerricde). Works "protected under this title" include works under a subsisting copyright.
This means it's lawful to sell DeCSS programs designed to decrypt the pre-1923 content on Charlie Chaplin DVDs. And without copyright term extensions, it would also be lawful to sell DeCSS programs designed to decrypt "Mickey's Early Years" and other pre-1946 content. (Actually, Mickey Mouse cartoons have fallen into the public domain due to a copyright notice flub-up [asu.edu].)