FC: Bush admin. says Congress can copyright "public domain" works

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Date: Wed, 09 Jan 2002 23:39:36 -0500
To: declan () well com
From: Wendy Seltzer <wendy () seltzer com>
Subject: Government takes more extreme line in second "Eldred" case

Hi Declan,
I thought your readers would be interested in the latest filings from Golan 
v. Ashcroft.  While we await the Supreme Court's announcement whether it 
will hear Eldred v. Ashcroft, the first challenge to the copyright term 
extension, the government has taken an even more extreme position in this 
second case.

> In the second challenge to Congress' power to extend the term of
> copyrights, the government has argued for even broader powers than it
> claimed in Eldred I.  In this case, Golan v. Ashcroft, the government now
> claims that Congress has the power not only to extend existing copyrights,
> but also to "restore" the copyright of work that has entered the public
> domain.  And unlike Eldred I, the government does not maintain that
> copyright is "largely" immune from First Amendment scrutiny; now the
> government claims it is totally immune from First Amendment scrutiny.  The
> government has also offered an extraordinary but mistaken theory about the
> history of the 1790 statute.
>
> Read the government brief and Golan's reply at
> <http://openlaw.org/golanvashcroft/>
>
> ----------
> Openlaw is a project of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.


--
Wendy Seltzer -- wendy () seltzer com
Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/seltzer.html




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