Parker wrote: > > "While many have commented on the fair use aspect, which pertains to > federal copyright laws, it has no relationship to the Virginia state > law at issue." > > Does this make any sense? Somehow I was under the impression that > federal law trumped state law.
Not in the case of exclusive rights policies such as copyright and patent. States in the USA have sovereign immunity, and have the power, recognized by the Supreme Court, to enact their own copyright regulations, such as for their State universities. This is one of the mnotivations for the never-enacted "Intellectual Property Protection Restoration" Act: > http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c106:S.1835: > http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:H.2344: The notion basically being, States would not be able to get the benefits of the Federal regulation unless they waived their sovereign immunity. In the United States, copyright is statutory, and first existed in the form of State regulations. Now, for Interstate Commerce, another story. Seth -- RIAA is the RISK! Our NET is P2P! http://www.nyfairuse.org/action/ftc DRM is Theft! We are the Stakeholders! New Yorkers for Fair Use http://www.nyfairuse.org [CC] Counter-copyright: http://realmeasures.dyndns.org/cc I reserve no rights restricting copying, modification or distribution of this incidentally recorded communication. Original authorship should be attributed reasonably, but only so far as such an expectation might hold for usual practice in ordinary social discourse to which one holds no claim of exclusive rights. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
