[rollei_list] Re: Copyright Law

  • From: Aaron Reece <oboeaaron@xxxxxxx>
  • To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:03:46 -0500

Hi Marc,

As a college music instructor this is something I unfortunately have to deal with on a regular basis. Copyright status in the US is clear as mud and probably deliberately so. Briefly, yes, the extensions to the original terms of copyright are retroactive, which is quite fishy since the intent of copyright in the US Constitution is "[t]o promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries . . ." (Article I Section 8). It is hard for me to understand how granting retroactive extensions to copyright terms provides incentive for authors to create new works, since the works in question are already extant. Even more mysterious to me is how extending copyright out to 70 years after the author's death encourages the creation of new works. But of course I am being intentionally obtuse. Note, however, that for works published before 1978, the situation is more nuanced. I have found the following pages invaluable in attempting to determine the copyright status of a specific work:

http://homepages.law.asu.edu/~dkarjala/OpposingCopyrightExtension/publicdomain/SearchC-R.html


This page I consider to be one of the most useful pages on the entire Internet:
http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

But I am having trouble pulling it up right now so you may have to look at the Google cache page:
http://tinyurl.com/yfsjrw2

I am not a lawyer, and this message does not constitute legal advice. I always wanted to say that.

Best wishes,
Aaron

On Nov 24, 2009, at 11:37 AM, Marc James Small wrote:

If I raise this topic on the LUG, I get nothing but noise and heat. That is one reason I am currently not on the LUG.

What do you folks believe to be the current state of the law on copyright in the US? I specifically ask for your views in light of the limited ruling in ELDRED v ASHCROFT, a 2003 opinion of the US Supreme Court.

My question deals with the extensions of the copyright period which began in 1978 -- is this retroactive? ELDRED seems to state that it is for works published from 1 JAN 1978. (And I am not certain that the current Court would support this if the case were presented on a matter of the Constitutional ban on ex post facto law.)

Please advise and remit!

Marc

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