Eldred v Ashcroft

Selina Sedai said:

What is the name of your state? Not applicable to my question.

I'm currently trying to wade through the majority opinion of the Supreme Court in Eldred v Ashcroft. I'm a bit confused though.

First, through most of it, Ginsburg writes that even though Congress has enacted over the past century, a lot of copyright extensions:

"Asserting that the last several decades have seen a proliferation of copyright legislation in departure from Congress' traditional pace of legislative amendment in this area, petitioners cite nine statutes passed between 1962 and 1974, each of which incrementally extended existing copyrights for brief periods." -- Eldred v Ashcroft, majority opinion.

however, the majority states that this proliferation is not a sign of Congress getting around the 'limited Times' clause by continually doing 'limited' extensions:

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My response:

What the Court is saying is that contrary to the petitioner's argument that the "limited Time" in effect when a copyright is secured becomes the constitutional boundary and that Congress has no power to extend copyright time on existing copyrights as it does on future copyrights, Congress does have the authority to extend the time limit for both existing copyright and future copyrights and throughout history Congress has placed existing copyrights on parity with future copyrights. The Court states "limited" means having boundaries on either side and "a time span appropriately 'limited' as applied to future copyrights does not automatically cease to be 'limited' when applied to existing copyrights."

The 1976 Copyright Act (1976 Act), copyright protection generally lasted from a work's creation until 50 years after the author's death; The 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA), extends copyright by twenty years from creation until 70 years after the author's death. The history has shown that Congress has always applied these extension to existing copyrights as well as future copyrights.

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"Concerning petitioners' assertion that Congress might evade the limitation on its authority by stringing together "an unlimited number of ‘limited Times,'" the Court of Appeals stated that such legislative misbehavior "clearly is not the situation before us."" -- Eldred v Ashcroft, majority opinion.

My response:

Here the Court is saying we don't address issues which are not before us. The petitioners were asserting a what-if or speculation or a parade of horrible and the Court is merely restating one of the principles of review by the U.S.S.C. and that is the Court does not address something which isn't before it. The Court decides the issues in the case which is before it and the hypothetical propounded by the petition of misbehavior by Congress was not an issue.

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Then, later, it seems like Ginsburg calls Congress's actions in passing the CTEA 'unwise.'

"In sum, we find that the CTEA is a rational enactment; we are not at liberty to second-guess congressional determinations and policy judgments of this order, however debatable or arguably unwise they may be. Accordingly, we cannot conclude that the CTEA—which continues the unbroken congressional practice of treating future and existing copyrights in parity for term extension purposes—is an impermissible exercise of Congress' power under the Copyright Clause." -- Eldred v Ashcroft, majority opinion.

So...which is it? What would have been found as unconstitutional? If Congress keeps passing extensions, aren't they effectively getting around the 'limited Times' clause via a loophole?

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My response:

The court doesn't decide what would have been unconstitutional. The Court decides the issues in the case before it. The " two questions: whether the CTEA's extension of existing copyrights exceeds Congress' power under the Copyright Clause; and whether the CTEA's extension of existing and future copyrights violates the First Amendment." The Court answered both questions in the negative.

Congress has the authority under Art. I, §8, cl. 8 of the U.S. constitution to prescribe the duration of copyrights. Giving parity to existing copyrights with future copyrights is not unconstitutional. Holders of currently existing copyrights at the time that Congress extends a copyright period expects that their copyrights will also be extended and the historical actions of Congress has always been consistent with that.

Nor does the CETA violate the first amendment because Copyright does not impermissibly restrict free speech. It grants the author an exclusive right only to the specific form of expression; copyright does not protect any idea or fact contained in the copyrighted work, and copyright allows for "fair use" even of the expression of the copyrighted work.

And, no, there is no waivering.

Hopefully that clarifies things for you.

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I haven't started on the two dissenting opinions, yet. I'm still trying to wade through the majority opinion. I understand most of the jargon in it, but I'm having a hard time understanding how Ginsburg can say 'there's been a lot of extensions in the recent past' then say 'but these aren't a sign of Congress ignoring the Constitution' and finally 'even though the CTEA is not a smart move.'

The opinion I'm reading can be found here:

http://www.thinkinglinks.info/converted_legal_docs/eldred/supremecourtruling/opinion.html

The HTML is a little screwy and I'm thinking about downloading the PDFs because they may not be as poorly rendered.

Could someone, if they have time, just explain to me what it is that the Supreme Court decided made the CTEA constitutional? The opinion reads to me like Ginsburg is wavering back and forth. I'm not a lawyer or anything, so I'm probably off on that.

Anything that could make the opinion easier to understand would be great. Even if it's just explaining some of the cases cited or something. I'll probably be back with more confusion after I wade through the dissenting opinions.

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