Kahle vs Ashcroft: Copyright Battle Continues

Robotech_Master writes "People may remember librarian Brewster Kahle as the man behind Archive.org's Wayback Machine and the Internet Bookmobile. He was one of the big supporters of Eldred in the Eldred vs Ashcroft case. Well, he's at it again. A new lawsuit, Kahle vs Ashcroft, has been filed as of March 22nd. Lawrence Lessig comments on this case in his blog." Question number 3 of the FAQ explains that while the Eldred case challenged the length of copyright expansion, this case challenges the breadth.

Creative Commons

[v_1_r_u_5]

Musicians who are interested in this might also be interested in the creative commons license [creativecommons.org].

Re:Hasn't this already been settled?

[panthro]

Not really. This is with reference to works that are no longer available... basically, he's saying that retaining copyright restrictions on abandonware is unconstitutional, and I agree.

Re:Hasn't this already been settled?

[Anonymous Coward]

no. SCOTUS basically said that Congress was still within the letter of the constitution by saying that copyrighted works still had a difinitive time-limited scope. even if that scope keeps getting extended.

read lessig's comments. he points out the difference in the complaints between this new case and the Eldred case.

Re:Dear Mr. Ashcroft

[nycsubway]

Ashcroft is a nutcase. He spent $8000 of taxpayers money cover up the bare breasts on the lady of justice statue in Washington DC. Because, as Al Franken says "he didn't want to be photographed next to another boob."

He also has daily prayer sessions with his staff. Regardless of their faith.

There are also stories of him asking judges to annoint him with oil when he got into a new position... weird stuff. He's just an all around nut.

Re:Pretty sweeping

[AndroidCat]

Under the current system (in line with the Berne Convention). Under the old system, if you didn't register, that copyright notice isn't valid and means sweet richard all.

Re:Hasn't this already been settled?

[AnyNoMouse]

Who's to classify a work as "abandonware?" If the author doesn't want the work released, he should have the right to keep it that way. The burden should rest on the publisher, even if that means tracking down the current copyright holder and begging for permission. Just because you can't find it easily doesn't mean that it should be free for the taking.

The constitution originally provided that all works had to apply for copyright to be copyrighted and that these copyrights had to apply for a renewal at some point to maintain copyright. A recent law changed these requirements.

"Abandonware" would be a copyrighted work that was not renewed.

Re:Hasn't this already been settled?

[Galuvian]

Prior to the Sonny Bono Act + DMCA changes to copywright laws, all Copywrighted work needed to be registered with the government. The question this case raises is now that copywrights are granted automatically at the time the work is created and no registration is necessary, there is no way to tell what the abandonware is, so everything is protected for life+70. The original copywright law provided for 14 years plus the option for another 14. The author had to explicitly come forward and request that the work remain copywrighted after a certain period of time. That is fundamentally different than the current copywright laws.

Re:Pretty sweeping

[David Hume]

GPL has the copyright notice, so it'll still get protection.

This isn't correct. According to item #2 of the FAQ [stanford.edu], if this lawsuit is succesful, mere "notice" would be insufficient, and instead we would be back to:

"a conditional copyright system that limited copyright protection to those who took affirmative steps to claim it -- by, for example,

registering their copyright, marking copies of their work with copyright notice, and renewing their copyright after a relatively short initial period of protection."

FAQ [stanford.edu] (emphasis added)

Re:Pretty sweeping

[SydShamino]

Every source file includes a copyright notice, correct?

Thus, they are protected under the traditional system. He says "noticed" in the text.

"no copyright until you register" is completely different.

If someone choose to publish source code without putting a copyright notice of any sort in the code, then under the traditional system that code would immediately become public domain. If, however, they bothered with a "Copyright 2004 Syd Shamino. All rights reserved except those provided by the General Public License." then their bases are covered. It's really that simple.

Re:Creative Commons

[panthro]

Creative Commons licenses can apply to a lot more than just music. They are currently used with writings, visual arts, photography, film/theatre, music, research, and more, and could potentially apply to anything that a copyright can.

Re:Pretty sweeping

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because *POOF* like magic - IT IS COPYRIGHTED.

Copyright is granted instantly upon creation by the author. Paying the copyright office $30 and filling out paperwork is just an additional and OPTIONAL course you can take. Just because you don't officially register it doesn't mean you don't still own it and control it and that there isn't a copyright on it.

You can verify this anywhere on the internet including the copyright office themselves. YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO REGISTER YOUR COPYRIGHT TO MAINTAIN COPYRIGHT ON YOUR CREATED WORK AND SUE IN COURT TO PREVENT OR STOP SOMEONE ELSE FROM USING IT.

Re:Pretty sweeping

[pavon]

I was very much in favor of what they were trying to do in the Eldred v. Ashcroft case, and can't understand why any judge could possibly think that extending copyright terms on existing works could encourage innovation. But I have to say that my initial reaction to this is that I don't like it at all. One of the nice features of copyright in my mind is the fact that it doesn't require going through a beurocratic agency - your copyright is assumed at the time of creation. If we go back to the old system it will create an unnecisarry burden on both the government and content creators.

All of the problems mentioned in the FAQ are really due to the fact that copyright is too long. Furthermore, I don't see how unconditional copyright creates a violation of free speech. (I haven't read the whole complaint yet, just the FAQ) But this is a good time to remind people to write their congress critters about the Public Domain Enhancement Act [eldred.cc] It will acheive the exact same goal of releasing "orphanware" into the public domain, but only requires people to register for copyright after 50 years - only putting the burden on money grubbers who want copyright for longer than it should exist anyway.

Re:Pretty sweeping

[elmegil]

I believe what they're saying is that the IMPLEMENTATION AS A WHOLE is copyrightable, but the ALGORITHM (and all those things that might be reasonably considered part of the algorithm, e.g. program logic--if I could copyright "if()then;" I'd be a wealthy man, but that is specifically disallowed) is not.

Of course, in the face of business process copyrights, that doesn't make much more sense.

Re:Pretty sweeping

[Anonymous Coward]

"Copyright protection is not available for ideas, program logic, algorithms, systems, methods, concepts, or layouts."

The computer program that implements these things is copyrightable. What they are saying is that you can't copyright Bubble Sort/whatever algorithm or the One True Brace Style.

Re:Pretty sweeping

[pavon]

It is the difference between copyright and patents. When you copyright your create work (source code) you only get protection for that specific work. You do not get protection for the ideas in the work, which can be freely used by anyone in their own programs, so long as they don't copy your code verbatim. As a comparison if someone wrote an article about sheep shearing methods, it would be an infringement of copyright to copy his article verbatim, but not to write your own article discussing the same methods.

That is all it is saying about not being able to receive copyright protection for ideas and algorithms.

Re:Trying to overturn Berne?

[Animats]

For example, they let Veeck vs SBCCI stand, which allows laws to be copyrighted by private entities.

No, no. The Fifth Circuit ruled for Veeck, and the Supreme Court let that stand. Veeck put a "copyrighted" building code on the Internet, and the Fifth Circuit ruled this was legal, whether the author of the code liked it or not.

Yet again: Where in the world is Joseph Gradecki?

[cr0sh]

Have you ever tried tracking down an author or a publisher to obtain reprint rights? I have - and I have yet to be successful. I have been more successful in weeding out information from manufacturers of proprietary hardware (for hacking/mod purposes) than I have with finding authors/publishers.

My best example:

I have all of the back issues of PCVR magazine (a magazine put out from 1992-1994 relating to homebrew VR using the PC). I would like to republish and give away CDs or downloads of the articles, but to do so I either need to get each author's permission (then likely reset/retype/reformat the article), or contact the publisher. Both of these options have turned out to be dead ends:

First off, getting permission from each of the authors is nearly impossible: most authors didn't list contact information, the few that did either list compuserve or old AOL addresses, neither of which work anymore. The few that do list real email addresses, those addresses likely don't work either (its been 10+ years after all). To make matters worse, some of the articles were written by the publisher/editor himself!

To understand, the publisher/editor of the magazine started it literally in his home (likely in the kitchen or garage!) - the first few issues are photocopied and stapled. It was a real shoestring publication - more of a 'zine for VR than anything else. A great lot of the information presented in its pages has been lost to the community at large, which is a shame because it seems like every article about 3D this or that here on Slashdot, there are posts asking about how to buy or build an HMD for this FPS or whatnot, or other esoteric 3D hardware - and I would love to be able to point these people to the methods and devices already utilised, so that people don't need to reinvent the wheel (and hitting the same stumbling blocks that were already overcome). This is the information that I want to save.

However, I have been unable to contact the publisher: Joseph D. Gradecki. I won't go into any detail as to what I have done to try to locate him in the past (I have already posted that kind of information in long past articles). Let it suffice to say that he seems to have dropped off the face of the planet, or at least the internet. None of his last know address or phone number information checks out. His last publishers (he wrote a couple of more recent books in the late 90's) have no idea where he is (or if they do, they are not giving me any help, which is possible or likely). I don't have the money to hire a PI or anything.

This is one case where having up-to-date information about where the publisher or author was would help. Furthermore, if there was a small burden to keep the copyright up (like a small fee to be paid, as suggested), I have no doubt that most or all of the authors of these articles would have let them lapse into public-domain long ago...

Re:Pretty sweeping

[angle_slam]

You're right that Disney is more likely to register everything they produce. That is not the point. They are targeting relatively unknown works that can't be published because of copyright reasons. For example, many old movies are salvageable but are deteriorating. But one can't just make a DVD of the movie because they have to figure out exactly who owns each part of the movie. Or an old magazine with a bunch of different articles. One who wants to republish it currently has to go about finding out who exactly owns the copyright to the collection and to each of the stories. Or they could not republish it, which is what is happening today.

Did you read the COA Ruling??

[Anonymous Coward]

The COA declared that you can't copyright the law and that it does diserve the public to have copyrights attached.

" Third, to enhance the market value of its model codes, SBCCI could easily publish them as do the compilers of statutes and judicial opinions, with "value-added" in the form of commentary, questions and answers, lists of adopting jurisdictions and other information valuable to a reader. The organization could also charge fees for the massive amount of interpretive information about the codes that it doles out. In short, we are unpersuaded that the removal of copyright protection from model codes only when and to the extent they are enacted into law disserves "the Progress of Science and useful Arts." U.S. Const. art. I. 8, cl. 8.

Conclusion

For the reasons discussed above, we REVERSE the district court's judgment against Peter Veeck, and REMAND with instructions to dismiss SBCCI's claims."

Veeck vs SBCCI was ruled opsite of what you claim. Laws can not be copyright. What the Supreme Court did was agree with the COA and not here SBCCI on apeal.

Re:Pretty sweeping

[DeepRedux]

There are a number of advantages to registering, according to the US Copyright Office FAQ [copyright.gov] these include

If registration is made within 3 months after publication of the work or prior to an infringement of the work, statutory damages and attorney's fees will be available to the copyright owner in court actions. Otherwise, only an award of actual damages and profits is available to the copyright owner.

I think that all of the RIAA suits for file sharing are based on asking statutory, not actual, damages.

Please MOD DOWN my previous post

[frankie]

Hooray, score one for the good guys. I am so damn happy that I was wrong [texoma.net] about the [techlawjournal.com] Veeck case [gtwassociates.com].

I spent HOURS googling about Veeck a couple weeks ago, and somehow picked bad keywords every time. All of the search results referred to the original case, the three-judge appeal, and/or the certiorari, but never the full court ruling [google.com]. Damn page rot.

Thank you for the correction. It's a fucking wonderful ray of sunshine.

Re:Another Possible Problem

[FearUncertaintyDoubt]

Actually, the article addresses this.

The Berne Convention is the most significant international treaty governing copyright, and it includes a provision prohibiting member states from imposing copyright formalities on the works of authors from other member states.

One way would be to re-impose formalities for all works of U.S. authors -- these are most works published in the U.S., and Berne doesn't prohibit signatory nations from imposing formalities on their own authors.

Re:Another Possible Problem

[cpt kangarooski]

Yeah, that's a common misreading. Treaties enjoy equal status with federal law, not the Constitution.

For example, you could have a treaty that directly imposed a tax on Americans, but since the Constitution requires that the House propose taxes, and treaties only involve the President and the Senate, that treaty is not going to have any force.