Public Do-maimed

[Mr. Dictator]

Link

Congress may take books, musical compositions and other works out of the public domain, where they can be freely used and adapted, and grant them copyright status again, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

In a 6-2 ruling, the court ruled that just because material enters the public domain, it is not “territory that works may never exit.” (PDF)

In dissent, Justices Stephen Breyer and Samuel Alito said the legislation goes against the theory of copyright and “does not encourage anyone to produce a single new work.” Copyright, they noted, was part of the Constitution to promote the arts and sciences.

The legislation, Breyer wrote, “bestows monetary rewards only on owners of old works in the American public domain. At the same time, the statute inhibits the dissemination of those works, foreign works published abroad after 1923, of which there are many millions, including films, works of art, innumerable photographs, and, of course, books — books that (in the absence of the statute) would assume their rightful places in computer-accessible databases, spreading knowledge throughout the world.”

Shouldn't these people be creating, instead of making money off the sweat of another person's labour?

What implications does this have? Are copyrights finally reaching the point where they need to be completely reassessed?

 

[Ergo Sum]

Absolutely unacceptable. The notion that we would lock off the inherited cultural work of generations because some people want to make a few dollars from others' toil boggles my mind.

 

[filli_noctus]

In this particular case I don't see the problem. From the article it appears that this law applies to works in the public domain in the US because they were foreign works produced before America applied copyright to non-American works. Basically copyright is being applied to works that are covered in the rest of the world and I imagine that the main beneficiaries will be the creators (those that are still alive) and their families.
Having said that it is a worrying precedent for any future copyright tweaks that are likely on the horizon as popular film and music starts to fall into the public domain in greater numbers.

 

[warpus]

This doesn't bother me as much as the bs extension of copyrights just before they are about to expire and enter public domain.

 

[Takhisis]

Ok, but the US should remember they're not the rulers of the world so outside the US we can still do whatever we want with our Internetz and if I want to email someone a copy of a book then I should be allowed to.

 

[plarq]

Where's Berne Convention about copyright?

And that retroactive reassertion hurts people who used formal public domain works

 

[asbestos]

In other words, it's private property if you can make money from it.

 

[Kozmos]

It was corporations that pushed the length of copyright to authors life and a bajillion years beyond it.

 

[plarq]

Next time, church will charge you money for reading Bible?

 

[classical_hero]

Well if you read the KJV, then they can't since there has never been a copyright on that work.

 

[illram]

Ok, but the US should remember they're not the rulers of the world so outside the US we can still do whatever we want with our Internetz and if I want to email someone a copy of a book then I should be allowed to.

Actually it's foreign copyright holders demanding that the US--in which these foreign movies and music were public domain--respect their foreign copyrights.

So the rest of the world is reminding the US that they are not rulers of the copyright world, by demanding that US law restrict the distribution of these works accordingly.

 

[Evie]

The specific law is not the problem. The ruling, opening the door for anyone to ask for congress to "give them back" their copyright (and we all know the copyright hogs have their lobbyists in every Washington office), is highly dangerous.

Mickey Mouse Laws being what they are, of course they might never even need this, as copyright length after author death is going to always be at least one more year than however long it's been since Walt Disney died.