Re: [License-discuss] Golan v. Holder
John Cowan wrote: EULAs are not copyright licenses: they do not grant the right to copy, distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or prepare derivative works. Whilst that is largely true, it is country dependent. They grant a right to copy within the computer, which is subject to a specific exemption in the US. In the UK the actual right that is infringed is to use the software. -- David Woolley Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want. RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam, that is no longer good advice, as archive address hiding may not work. ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Golan v. Holder
Chris Travers scripsit: Is it just me or does Golan more or less read out of the Constitution any functional requirements regarding copyright law and read the copyright/patent clause basically as delegating unlimited power to Congress in this regard? Perhaps not *just* you, but certainly not me. It pretty much follows on Eldred, and whereas I think Eldred was wrongly decided because of its nose-in-the-tent effect, that's not happening here. Why should an Malaysian author receive no protection for his pre-1989 works in the U.S. because his government couldn't be bothered to sign an international copyright agreement? Copyright terms are insanely long and getting longer, but that does not mean they should be applied inequitably. These works only fell into the public domain for essentially technical reasons such as this. I mean can Congress now start allowing telephone directories to be copyrighted, since we no longer care about promoting the progress of anything? The U.K. has the same utilitarian view of copyright we do, and yet phone directories are copyrightable there, because they have accepted the sweat-of-the-brow doctrine that our courts rejected. There is still plenty of scope for national law at the boundaries of copyright, even with near-universal Berne applicability. Note to David: You're right, but Larry and I were speaking of U.S. law only. -- You know, you haven't stopped talking John Cowan since I came here. You must have been http://www.ccil.org/~cowan vaccinated with a phonograph needle.co...@ccil.org --Rufus T. Firefly ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Golan v. Holder
The Supreme Court long ago made clear that patents and copyrights are a matter of almost unlimited discretion for Congress. The *one* thing the Constitution makes clear about patents and copyrights - that they are to be effective for a limited time - Congress has demonstrated that they do not intend to be limited by, and the Court does not take efforts to make them seriously. They probably wouldn't sit still for Congress completely eliminating Fair Use due to First Amendment concerns, but if they wanted to institute a sweat-of-the-brow doctrine to protect telephone directories tomorrow, the Supremes wouldn't say boo. MW -Original Message- From: license-discuss-boun...@opensource.org [mailto:license-discuss-boun...@opensource.org] On Behalf Of Chris Travers Sent: Monday, January 23, 2012 1:28 AM To: license-discuss@opensource.org Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Golan v. Holder Is it just me or does Golan more or less read out of the Constitution any functional requirements regarding copyright law and read the copyright/patent clause basically as delegating unlimited power to Congress in this regard? I mean can Congress now start allowing telephone directories to be copyrighted, since we no longer care about promoting the progress of anything? ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
[License-discuss] Golan v. Holder
Colleagues, I commend for your reading pleasure the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Golan v. Holder, 565 U. S. (2012), which holds broadly that Congress can restore the copyrights of works previously in the public domain in order to conform to the requirements of the Berne Convention. See http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-545.pdf and 17 U.S.C. 104A http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_0104---A000- .html . This 6-2 decision was written by the court's copyright expert, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It relies heavily on the court's earlier decision in Eldred v. Ashcroft, which some of you may remember from a few years ago and which affirmed Congressional power to extend copyright terms. Besides being a well-written summary of the purposes of copyright and the balance struck by copyright law, the Golan decision emphasizes again for us that the public domain isn't quite as safe as licenses. /Larry Lawrence Rosen Rosenlaw Einschlag, a technology law firm (www.rosenlaw.com) 3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482 ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
