[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. Question: What happens to works that received their copyright between 1909 and 1922 ? These fell into the public domain before the 1998 law, but were copyrighted less than 95 years ago. Do they stay in the public domain or revert to the copyright holders? --Dan
----- 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.
Some of us right wing ideologues, perhaps most, deplore the extension. Anyway, wasn't it Clinton who signed the bill? The majority opinion was written by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal ideologue. Several of the justices in hearing oral arguments suggested that they didn't like the law but believed that it was constitutional. It seems that it was a agreed that perpetual copyright would be unconstitutional, because the Constitution refers to a limited time. The dissenters, Breyer and Stevens, said that 95 years was approximately perpetual.
From: "Steve Gray" <stevebg@adelphia.net> fun>, <mailto:math-fun-request@mailman.xmission.com?subject=unsubscribe> List-Archive: <http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/private/math-fun/> Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2003 15:21:38 -0800
----- 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.
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On 15 Jan 2003 at 15:21, Steve Gray wrote:
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.
This is off the mark on two counts. The question of the propriety of the copyright extension was *NOT* before the court, and so it wasn't "blessed" this time around -- Eldred *conceded* that the current term was within Congress's discretion to set. Second, as a general rule, the Supreme Court very rarely intrudes on Congress's discretion to "interpret" things, and so it was always unlikely that SCOTUS would get involved in the hairsplitting of "100 yrs is OK, but 110 is not, and life +70 is too long, but maybe life +50 isn't" -- they would view that, quite properly, IMO, as a political question best resolved by Congress rather than a judicial matter cast in concrete by a court decision. Note that copyrights of existing works *HAVE* been extended in the past, and so this action wasn't even precedent setting on that score. Altogether, I think it was a pretty foolish suit and never had a chance, regardless of your opinions about the politics and integrity of the Court. /bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <--
Bernie Cosell wrote:
Second, as a general rule, the Supreme Court very rarely intrudes on Congress's discretion to "interpret" things, and so it was always unlikely that SCOTUS would get involved in the hairsplitting of "100 yrs is OK, but 110 is not, and life +70 is too long, but maybe life +50 isn't" -- they would view that, quite properly, IMO, as a political question best resolved by Congress rather than a judicial matter cast in concrete by a court decision.
But let's be mathematicians for a moment. Eventually something must deal with the fact that the constitutionsays copyright terms cannot be infinite but can, de facto, be unbounded. So while each extension of the copyright term is itself constitutional, congress could hypothetically extend it for 20 years every 20 years, and that has the same effect as a single clearly unconstitutional action. How can this get resolved? Surely it is the domain of the supreme court -- or maybe of the direct limit of all supreme courts :-)... --Michael Kleber kleber@brandeis.edu
On 16 Jan 2003 at 9:44, Michael Kleber wrote:
Bernie Cosell wrote:
Second, as a general rule, the Supreme Court very rarely intrudes on Congress's discretion to "interpret" things, and so it was always unlikely that SCOTUS would get involved in the hairsplitting of "100 yrs is OK, but 110 is not, and life +70 is too long, but maybe life +50 isn't" -- they would view that, quite properly, IMO, as a political question best resolved by Congress rather than a judicial matter cast in concrete by a court decision.
But let's be mathematicians for a moment. Eventually something must deal with the fact that the constitutionsays copyright terms cannot be infinite but can, de facto, be unbounded. So while each extension of the copyright term is itself constitutional, congress could hypothetically extend it for 20 years every 20 years, and that has the same effect as a single clearly unconstitutional action.
Why is it clearly unconstitutional? Being mathematicians again, since there is a difference between "finite but unbounded" and "not finite" why couldn't the former be constitutional even if the latter is not? /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <--
participants (5)
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asimovd＠aol.com -
Bernie Cosell -
John McCarthy -
Michael Kleber -
Steve Gray