Comments on: from the there's-no-way-in-hell-you'll-win-that-one department https://archives.lessig.org/?p=3767 2002-2015 Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:38:07 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.7.2 By: Jim Carlile https://archives.lessig.org/?p=3767#comment-28545 Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:38:07 +0000 http://lessig.org/blog/2009/04/from_the_theres-no-way-in-hell.html#comment-28545 Didn’t Sonny Bono’s wife try to get going the “infinity minus one day” copyright term, too? A wonderful example of “limited” duration…

Because there’s so much money involved (all of Tolkien’s works, for example) I doubt SCOTUS will uphold the decision if asked. It’s all about property rights these days, and copyrights have been succssfully framed as if they were like houses, where people were somehow trying to take them away from the poor artist or heir.

Question: my understanding of URAA restoration is that it did not apply if the foreign works had been copyrighted already in the U.S. and the terms had expired. In that case, they were still in the public domain. This would include many British books pre-1978.

Is this in fact the case, and wouldn’t that mean that many older, already-once-copyrighted foreign works in the U.S. were exempt from restoration? If so– because so many were once in U.S. copyright– it’s not so serious a problem for the PD.

]]> By: Christopher Parsons https://archives.lessig.org/?p=3767#comment-28544 Tue, 07 Apr 2009 03:21:07 +0000 http://lessig.org/blog/2009/04/from_the_theres-no-way-in-hell.html#comment-28544 Congrats! A win for the public domain is always a good thing! 😀

]]> By: Chris Parry https://archives.lessig.org/?p=3767#comment-28543 Tue, 07 Apr 2009 01:47:24 +0000 http://lessig.org/blog/2009/04/from_the_theres-no-way-in-hell.html#comment-28543 Congratulations!

]]> By: Jake https://archives.lessig.org/?p=3767#comment-28542 Mon, 06 Apr 2009 23:55:24 +0000 http://lessig.org/blog/2009/04/from_the_theres-no-way-in-hell.html#comment-28542 My law professor, Ed Lee, worked on this. Congrats to him, Lessig, an the rest of the team!

]]> By: b. https://archives.lessig.org/?p=3767#comment-28541 Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:59:51 +0000 http://lessig.org/blog/2009/04/from_the_theres-no-way-in-hell.html#comment-28541 Too bad Sonny Bono did not revive already expired copyrights. Too bad nobody argued that, if the 1909 act was still valid law for anything created before 1976, that Sonny Bono could not be applied to works created before 1998 without “changing the traditional contours of copyright”.

]]> By: Robert F. https://archives.lessig.org/?p=3767#comment-28540 Mon, 06 Apr 2009 14:22:47 +0000 http://lessig.org/blog/2009/04/from_the_theres-no-way-in-hell.html#comment-28540 It sounds like you’re pleased with the outcome, but I don’t really get it. Perhaps you could write about the possible implications of this?

]]> By: Steve Baba https://archives.lessig.org/?p=3767#comment-28539 Mon, 06 Apr 2009 01:19:46 +0000 http://lessig.org/blog/2009/04/from_the_theres-no-way-in-hell.html#comment-28539 “there’s-no-way-in-hell-you’ll-win-that-one “

Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought the legal view was NO CASE IS A SURE WINNER (especially if you lost once and won on some novel legal view):

Protect yourself from business lawsuits: –and lawyers like me – Google Books Resultby Thomas A. Schweich – 1998 – Law – 223 pages
Consequently, any lawyer who tells you your case is a sure winner is lying

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