Re:Supreme Court Says Congress May Re-Copyright Public Domai...
by rayiner on Thursday January 19, 2012 @11:02AM
(#3485005)
What "promote the progress of science and useful arts" is such fuzzy language, deferring to the legislature's idea of what promotes that progress is as reasonable a decision as imposing the Court's own view.
Of course adding a given public domain work back into copyright doesn't promote the creation of any specific work, but harmonizing American copyright law with European laws, generally, might arguably promote creation of works.
The key phrase in the clause is that:
[The Congress shall have Power]* to... [secure] for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
*) Article I, Section 8.
Like the other enumerated powers, the language of the Constitution gives Congress a lot of leeway in exercising that specific power.
Re:Supreme Court Says Congress May Re-Copyright Public Domai...
by Volpe on Wednesday January 18, 2012 @09:28PM
(#3482953)
Perhaps, because the world doesn't begin and end with the US east and west coast.
If you ignore the fact this is still under copyright overseas, you are setting the precedent that they can do the same in return. No?
Re:Supreme Court Says Congress May Re-Copyright Public Domai...
by joering1 on Wednesday January 18, 2012 @10:13PM
(#3483048)
the problem is that many times the world follows US laws and regulations and applies those locally (also: student being deported to US based on broken UK law that UK itself wasnt interested in prosecuting)
How does retroactively adding copyright to public domain works in anyway "promote" it's already been accomplished. This the same argument that was used Eldred vs. Ashcroft where this argument also failed. It was a bad ruling then and it's a bad ruling now.
If we want to have this decided by the lawmakers then we should amend the Constitution to grant this power.