Posted on 01/15/2003 8:14:57 AM PST by general_re
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld longstanding copyrights designed to protect the profits of songs, books and cartoon characters, a huge victory for Disney and other companies.
The 7-2 ruling, while not unexpected, was a blow to Internet publishers and others who wanted to make old books available online and use the likenesses of a Mickey Mouse cartoon and other old creations without paying high royalties.
Hundreds of thousands of books, movies and songs were close to being released into the public domain when Congress extended the copyright by 20 years in 1998.
Justices said the copyright extension, named for the late Rep. Sonny Bono, R-Calif., was not unconstitutional.
The Constitution "gives Congress wide leeway to prescribe `limited times' for copyright protection and allows Congress to secure the same level and duration of protection for all copyright holders, present and future," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (news - web sites) said from the bench.
A contrary ruling would have cost entertainment giants like The Walt Disney Co. and AOL Time Warner Inc. hundreds of millions of dollars. AOL Time Warner had said that would threaten copyrights for such movies as "Casablanca," "The Wizard of Oz" and "Gone With the Wind."
Also at risk of expiration was protection for the version of Mickey Mouse portrayed in Disney's earliest films, such as 1928's "Steamboat Willie."
Congress passed the copyright law after heavy lobbying from companies with lucrative copyrights.
Exactly.
Unless the EU does something stupid (probable) to extend copyright protections, then they won't have the same excuse next time...
A million years isn't "forever" either. Let's have million-year copyright terms. Sound good?
The Court was stuck, however, by the fact that this loophole doesn't involve an obvious circumvention of the "limited terms" clause at any specific step. At best, the Court might find a "clear pattern" rationale if Congress extends and re-extends copyright terms a few more times. If so, the issue might be resolved sometime in the latter half of the twenty-first century.
This presents us with a dilemma. Your ruling is now at odds with the Supreme Court's. The Court considered this question and came to the conclusion that there is nothing in the Constitution which prevents Congress from granting these kinds of extensions.
To resolve this dilemma, let us consider the immortal words of Judge Judy. "You say 'yes,' I say 'no,' I'm the judge, I win."
So, you obviously believe Roe v. Wade was decided correctly.
True enough, but bear in mind that the Supreme Court has also frequently ignored the plain meaning of the 2nd Amendment and interpreted the commerce clause to mean that the feds can do absolutely anything. Their word is law, but it isn't always right.
Yes, and at that point it might be appropriate for the Court to intervene. Absent that rationale, though, they would just be second-guessing the legislature as to what the "correct" term of a copyright should be. I frankly applaud them for not doing that. I wish more judges would be that reticent to substitute their own judgements for that of elected legislatures. I could never figure out how the Florida Supreme Court came to the conclusion that they were free to jack around with the deadlines specified in Florida election law. When they did that, they essentially turned themselves into a House of Lords with the power to amend legislation as they saw fit. That they were overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court did not surprise me a bit.
I think the real gripe here is that people are frustrated by the fact that a special-interest lobby bought itself some lucrative legislation. That's a problem, but the courts are not the right place to try to fix that.
Based on what? It was 70 years, then it was 90, and now it's 300 years - every step of the way, it's a "limited" term, which Congress, in its infinite wisdom, saw fit to implement. You're not going to argue that 300 years is the "wrong number", are you?
It's a matter of the span of the product lifecycle, the term it takes to come to fruition, the nature of the market. For example, patents can be reauthorized if the term of introduction and adoption was protracted and the inventor otherwise incapable of recouping a return. Consider that a prescription drug can take ten years to come to market. A book is often the life work of an author. A musician often prepares and develops their skill for decades.
That variability is why the term of state-sanctioned intellectual property protection is still a political decision. If you don't like it, lobby your congressman.
We're just talking past each other. You continue to argue the case, while I'm arguing the dispute-resolution mechanism. Nothing I've said implies that the procedures will produce "correct" results; only that they are the procedures we have all agreed to so as to implement a 'rule of law'.
There are court decisions every day that somebody, somewhere thinks are "incorrect." Roe v Wade is a famous one. Bush v Gore has its detractors as well. So what? We've all agreed that when these rulings come down, they are the law. You can still be against them, but you also have to live with them.
The right place to fix the copyright issue is in the legislature. Asking small panels of unelected philospher kings to diddle with legislation using their superior wisdom is asking for trouble in the long run.
Oh, please. What exactly is the Supreme Court for, if not to interpret the Constitution and judge when some legislative act runs afoul of it? How do you propose they should do that without running afoul of your "philosopher-kings" formulation?
One of my great disappointments with Free Republic is how often it happens that people treat a discussion of mechanism as an attack on a particular position. It is not unlike the political dilemma faced by conservatives who would prefer to eliminate the mechanism of Affirmative Action but who will face a barrage of criticism from Democrats that if they do so they are "racists."
Here we have people who want copyrights to expire sooner rather than later, and they want to argue that point regardless of the mechanism employed to change it. Here we see people who would croak if the Supreme Court had ruled in favor of Gore, who want the Court this time, and this time only, to re-write legislation to suit them. Why? Because they want the copyrights to expire, and the legislative debate did not go their way. So to Hell with judicial restraint and the proper mechanism for amending law, let's have the Court do it.
Understand something: I do not know what the right number is. I do not claim to have any divine wisdom on the subject. I only know that I do not want small panels of unelected people deciding these things. If it is true that the elected legislature is corrupt, and that it was bribed by Disney and others to make this extension, that is a horrible thing. But the cure is not to empower philospher kings to intervene. They aren't going to stop with our favorite interventions, they'll be intervening all over the place, just as the Florida Supreme Court did. I don't want that, and it has nothing to do with copyrights.
I don't want your book. I don't want anything from you. I want to make copies of the book your father wrote, and sell them just like you're doing. I'll buy one copy from you to get the text. Then the book will be mine, and I can do with it what I want. I don't have to seek out Shakespeare's or Dickens' heirs just to publish a volume of theirs. What gives you rights they don't have?
The point is, ideas aren't property. We let people monopolize the profit from their ideas for a limited period in order to reward and encourage creativity. But you ain't writing new books, you're just trying to make a profit off your Dad's. I can't see how that encourages creativity. Rather, maybe you'd go out and do something more creative if you didn't have the meal ticket.
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