Posted on 05/15/2007 9:23:37 AM PDT by dayglored
Ding ding ding! I think we have a winner. Too bad WE all end up losers.
The Supreme Court just repeated that analysis a year or two ago in upholding federal laws against California's attempt to legalize growing your own marijuana for medical use. Even Scalia held that that was a valid use of the commerce clause, on the theory that if people can grow their own marijuana some of it might be diverted to interstate sales.
But in this case, however misguided the legislation is, I think it is constitutional under the copyrights clause combined with the necessary and proper clause; the commerce clause doesn't even have to enter into the analysis.
There are a scary number of folk who worship the law in this country. The nanny state depends heavily on that.
People forget that "intellectual property" is wholly an invention of the state. The Constitutional basis for it is that we, as a civilization, were to allow them exclusive distribution rights for limited terms because we saw utility in doing so. The fact that some clod has copyright over the Beatles tune "yesterday" 40 years after it was written is a fairly recent historical oddity that comes from our legislooters being totally subverted by Big Money interests. RIAA/MPAA are stealing from US by asserting copyright on works 40, 60 and even 70 years old. The original copyright term was 14 years, renewable once for a total of 28 years. In addition, anything that you wanted to assert as being copyrighted had to be registered with FedGov. I consider the current state of the law to be nothig but legalized theft from the public domain where these works properly belong, and as such, I have no respect for copyright on anything beyond that initial term.
Same goes for anyone trying to assert that I have no right to copy any such work for my own use, or to install software that will allow me to make such use of it as I see fit. I'm not renting my music from RIAA. This can be easily shown because I have the right to sell it to secondhand strores. (also called the 'right of first sale', which the music companies tried to get outlawed years ago but failed because our government apparently wasn't as corrupt then as it has become today.
the commerce clause doesn’t even have to enter into the analysis.
I was just pointing out that the big boys can do anything they want.
there is no constraint.
Once the commerce clause was torn open ... and as you pointed out .. rubbed with salt ... there is nothing beyond the reach.
That's okay, the RIAA goon squad already thinks they are FBI.
A former ATF Chief has joined the RIAA and the RIAA has "FBI-like" jackets that they have worn on raids of flea market vendors in the absence of police to seize bootleg merchandise (it could only be forced by court order, they cannot just "take").
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