Category Archives: good law

A district court in the Southern District of New York has struck down the anti-bootlegging provision of the copyright act. There is a new report here. I should have the opinion up soon. (Disclosure: I did pro bono work on this case.)
UPDATE: I have a scanned pdf of the opinion. (Warning: It is huge (64mg)). (Thanks to Joe Gratz, here‘s a very readable compressed version at about 500k).
The opinion is fantastic. The Court concludes (1) that antibootlegging regulations are “copyright-like” regulations, and thus are within the scope of the Copyright Clause, (2) that this regulation violates the Copyright Clause because it doesn’t have a limited term (citing Eldred (sweet justice)) (And remember, the 11th Circuit’s case expressly did not consider the limited times argument), and (3) that Congress can’t use the Commerce Clause to do what it can’t do under the Copyright Clause, so long as the subject matter is “copyright-like.”
I have always been a fan of Judge Baer, but never more than today. Continue reading →

Christian Ahlert and Thomas Hoeren have translated a Munich Court decision about the enforceability of the GPL in Germany. Ahlert also has an introduction, to the case and to Creative Commons, and Professor Hoeren has written a commentary. Continue reading →

The UK Parliamentary Office on Science and Technology is preparing a POST note on ‘Open Source’. (No, I didn’t know what a POST note is exactly either, but check it out here.) The author is looking for helpful comments. I’ve created a temporary email address for David Berry. You can send him comments at that address for a week. Continue reading →

Here’s the question: What would the Induce Act look like if it balanced the interests of copyright owners and technological innovators? Here’s what: the Inducing Innovation Act. Comments welcomed, and thanks to all those who helped work on this…. Continue reading →

So today copyright scholar Joe Liu at Boston College asked a room full of law professors an interesting question. What did we think copyright would look like in 8 years? Here were some of the main categories of predictions (some contradict):… Continue reading →

Stefan Bechtold writes that the EU Commission (ok, a staff report) has decided that copyright terms for recordings in Europe should not be increased beyond the current term (50 years after publication), despite the growing pressure of recording labels to increase the term to “save” (as they put it) some of the most important Rock from entering the public domain. The story is getting press in Europe. (Independent, BBC).

This is an extremely important development in this battle. For once, a government-related entity has recognized the truth (or at least, not had its recognition crushed). I’ve already been talking to archives that are working on the idea of releasing all the recordings they can when they pass into the public domain on January 1, as a way of demonstrating the value of a wide range of work becoming available, unencumbered, for widespread use.

Here in the U.S., we’ll be able to celebrate the same in, um, 2019. Till then, for your listening pleasure, an oldie (first posted here last July): a 1937 radio program from the Columbia Workshop about creative works passing from the “copyright lane” into the “public domain“. Continue reading →

Ernie has put together a line-by-line rebuttal to Senator Hatch. Continue reading →

As reported, we survived the government’s motion to dismiss in Golan v. Ashcroft. Thanks to the excellent work of lawyers at Wheeler, Trigg & Kennedy, we’ve now convinced the court of the importance of discovery to demonstrate the actual harms caused by “restored” copyrights.

Aaron has built a site to help us collect stories, some of which may become part of the suit. Please help spread the link: the beginning of an archive to the public domain. Continue reading →

It is so rare that I am in 100% agreement with the Cato Institute, but there have been important examples in the past (Eldred). Here’s another. There’s a great essay by Doug Bandow titled “Don’t Ban Technology to Solve Copyright Problems,” which appeared in the Washington Times but is not yet on Cato’s site here. Stay tuned, and stay right (as in correct) Cato. Continue reading →

This is good news (ok, not for Halderman but for the law). SunnComm says it is suing Alex Halderman (Ed Felten’s student) because he posted a paper pointing out the weaknesses in SunnComm’s copy-protection software. I’m sure there will be a world of legal support to help Halderman establish what should be an obvious point: tell the truth is not yet a crime, and (fortunately for most professors) writing even wrong papers is not either.

UPDATE: Oh well. Looks like SunnComm has come to its senses. No lawsuit after all. Continue reading →