Re: [math-fun] Copyright extension
It's not right-wing v. left-wing -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the majority decision, and she's not normally considered right-wing. I think that the Supremes were much more worried about things like the balance of trade -- Hollywood is one of the few US industries that has a positive trade balance with the rest of the world. As usual, the prospect of very real and imminent damage to a particular group v. very dispersed and not-well-understood gains for society at large, meant that they would try for damage control. Also, the Supremes have grandchildren & great grandchildren who want to opportunity to go to Disneyland -- where would Disneyland be without Mickey? ;-) At 03:21 PM 1/15/03 -0800, Steve Gray wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: <asimovd@aol.com> To: <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 1:55 PM Subject: [math-fun] Copyright extension
The Supreme Court just blessed the law of 1998 extending the 75 years of copyright protection to 95 years.
(See <http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/15/business/15CND-COPY.html>.)
This isn't great news for The People, who benefit by having works fall into the public domain.
GRAY: And in about 2020, if the congress then is as disgustingly corrupt as the present one, they will extend it to maybe 200 years. (Why fool around with small increases?) And if the Supremes are as dominated by right-wing ideologues as they are now, the extension will be blessed again.
On 15 Jan 2003 at 15:45, Henry Baker wrote:
It's not right-wing v. left-wing -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the majority decision, and she's not normally considered right-wing.
I think that the Supremes were much more worried about things like the balance of trade ...
I agree that it has nothing to do with right-wing vs left-wing, but I also don't think it had anythign to do with balance of trade or other non-judicial issues... I had a different analysiis and had expected this decision on simple, normal legal grounds: there are *VERY*FEW* areas where Congress is given the discretion to do something where the SCOTUS doesn't defer to Congress's ability to *use* that discretion. There were two issues in this case, to my view: one was whether the new limit for copyrights was an allowed interpretation of "for a limited time" and the second is whether it was proper for Congress to extend Copyright limits retroactively. Note that Petitioner (Eldred) *conceded* that the new limit was not an overstepping of Congress's authority. And so the only real question before the court was whether Congress could make that extension retroactive, and that strikes me as a no-brainer [Eldred never had a chance]. The court, quite correctly, IMO, noted the absurdity of Eldred's contention:
... Although conceding that the CTEA's baseline term of life plus 70 years qualifies as a "limited Tim[e]" as applied to future copyrights, petitioners contend that existing copyrights extended to endure for that same term are not "limited." ...
Huh? either the copyright term is a proper "limited time" or it isn't -- trying to argue that it is OK and limited for some copyrighted works but would be excessive and an overstepping of Congress's authority on other works is a CRAZY (imo) argument to be making. So I think that political and conspiracy-theory analyses of this decision are really off the mark. /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <--
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Bernie Cosell -
Henry Baker