[wordup] Supreme Court Endorses Copyright Theft

[Adam Shand]

From: 
http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/000730.shtml#000730

January 15, 2003
Supreme Court Endorses Copyright Theft
• posted by Dan Gillmor 08:34 AM
• permanent link to this item

Swipe a CD from a record store and you'll get arrested. But when 
Congress authorizes the entertainment industry to steal from you -- 
well, that's the American way.

We learned as much on Wednesday when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that 
Congress can repeatedly extend copyright terms, as it did most recently 
in 1998 when it added 20 years to the terms for new and existing works.

The law, a brazen heist, was called the Copyright Term Extension Act. It 
was better known as the Sonny Bono act, so named after its chief sponsor 
even though Disney and other giant media corporations were the money and 
muscle behind it.

Who got robbed? You did. I did.

Who won? Endlessly greedy media barons will now collect billions from 
works that should have long since entered the public domain.

Like public lands and the oceans, the public domain is controlled by no 
one -- a situation that infuriates people who believe that nothing can 
have value unless some person or corporation owns it. The public domain 
is the pool of knowledge from which new art and scholarship have arisen 
over the centuries.

The Constitution talks about granting rights to creators of ''science 
and useful arts'' but only for limited periods. After that, the works 
can be used freely by anyone.

Walt Disney understood the value of the public domain, and used it 
precisely as other great artists had done. He updated an 
out-of-copyright character to create Mickey Mouse, for example, and 
launched an empire.

The company he founded later used French writer Victor Hugo's work, 
which was also no longer owned by anyone, to create a cartoon based on 
the Hunchback of Notre Dame saga. The Disney animators had every right 
to build new works on old ones -- and the public also got the benefit. 
Try the same thing with Mickey Mouse and you'll be hauled into court 
faster than you can say ''Goofy.''

The court's 7-2 ruling betrayed some judicial discomfort, observing that 
Congress has the power to do ''arguably unwise'' things. Get ready for 
more unwise acts, in that case.

Will our lawmakers now race to collect campaign bribes from those who'd 
extend patent terms, too? Do you want to pay extortionate prices for 
live-saving drugs indefinitely? The pharmaceutical industry, which 
certainly has the money to spend, would undoubtedly love to make it happen.

Lawrence Lessig, the Stanford Law professor who argued the case before 
the court in October, was understandably dishearted by the outcome. But 
when he said in his weblog that he blamed himself for the court's 
decision, he was wrong. No one could have convinced this court, not in 
these times.

A word of praise as well for Eric Eldred, the lead plaintiff in this 
case. He wanted to publish on the Internet a number of books that should 
have been in the public domain by now. The people who still control most 
older works have demonstrated little or no interest in making them 
available -- and our heritage dwindles by the day.

Maybe we can have a serious national discussion about these issues. 
Sometimes I worry that people are oblivious to anything but immediate 
gratification, but I also sense that the public is beginning to grasp 
the scale of corruption that has led to incessant copyright extensions 
-- and will see the risks in even more theft from what should belong to 
all of us.

In any case, the fight didn't end on Wednesday. Here's part of what 
Lessig, who has become a friend as I've followed his campaigns for our 
rights and our culture, wrote Wednesday on his weblog:

     ''I have often wondered whether it would ever be possible to lose a 
case and yet smell victory in the defeat. I'm not yet convinced it's 
possible. But if there is any good that might come from my loss, let it 
be the anger and passion that now gets to swell against the unchecked 
power that the Supreme Court has said Congress has. When the Free 
Software Foundation, Intel, Phillis Schlafly, Milton Friedman, Ronald 
Coase, Kenneth Arrow, Brewster Kahle, and hundreds of creators and 
innovators all stand on one side saying, 'this makes no sense,' then it 
makes no sense. Let that be enough to move people to do something about 
it. Our courts will not.''

# Here's the majority opinion. And here are dissents by Justices Stevens 
and Breyer, all posted by the Stanford Center for Internet and Society.
# Lots more links on Donna Wentworth's excellent CopyFight blog.

NOTE: This essay, which is tomorrow's newspaper column, is a 
much-revised version of the blog item I posted earlier today.