I would like to personally thank the WMF staff and board for having pursued this.
Good luck. On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 11:40 AM, Geoff Brigham <gbrig...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed an amicus > ("friends of the court") brief in Golan v. Holder, a case of great > importance before the Supreme Court that will affect our understanding of > the public domain for years to come. See > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_v._Holder. The EFF is representing the > Wikimedia Foundation in addition to the American Association of Libraries, > the Association of College and Research Libraries, the Association of > Research Libraries, the University of Michigan Dean of Libraries, and the > Internet Archive. > > This case raises critical issues as to whether Congress may withdraw works > from the public domain and throw them back under a copyright regime. In > 1994, in response to the U.S. joining of the Berne Convention, Congress > granted copyright protection to a large body of foreign works that the > Copyright Act had previously placed in the public domain. Affected cultural > goods probably number in the millions, including, for example, Metropolis > (1927), The Third Man (1949), Prokofiev's Peter in the Wolf, music by > Stravinsky, paintings by Picasso, drawings by M.C. Escher, films by Fellini, > Hitchcock, and Renoir, and writings by George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, and > J.R.R. Tolkien. > > The petitioners are orchestra conductors, educators, performers, film > archivists, and motion picture distributors who depend upon the public > domain for their livelihood. They filed suit in 2001, pointing out that > Congress exceeded its power under the Copyright Clause and the First > Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. They eventually won at the district > court level, but that decision was overturned on appeal in the Tenth > Circuit. The U.S. Supreme Court - which rarely grants review - did so > here. > > Petitioners filed their brief last week, and you can find it here: > http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/6684. We are expecting a number of > parties to file "friends of the court" briefs. The EFF's brief can be > found here: http://www.eff.org/cases/golan-v-holder . > > The Wikimedia Foundation joined the EFF brief in light of the tremendously > important role that the public domain plays in our mission to "collect and > develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, > and to disseminate it effectively and globally." We host millions of works > in the public domain and are dependent on thousands of volunteers to search > out and archive these works. Wikimedia Commons alone boasts approximately 3 > million items in these cultural commons. To put it bluntly, Congress cannot > be permitted the power to remove such works from the public domain whenever > it finds it suitable to do so. It is not right - legally or morally. The > Copyright Clause expressly requires limits on copyright terms. The First > Amendment disallows theft from the creative commons. Such works belong to > our global knowledge. For this reason, we join with the EFF and many others > to encourage the Court to overturn a law that so threatens our public domain > - not only with respect to the particular works at issue but also with > respect to the bad precedent such a law would set for the future. > > We anticipate the Court will reach a decision sometime before July 2012. > > > -- > Geoff Brigham > General Counsel > Wikimedia Foundation > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l