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O'Reilly may have (expensively) prevailed in court heretofore, but now we have the Supreme Court declaring that works once in the public domain can be retrieved

by thyrsus 15y ago

O'Reilly may have (expensively) prevailed in court heretofore, but now we have the Supreme Court declaring that works once in the public domain can be retrieved into private possession. It's an open question whether that ruling would have applied in this case - all the better to explode the legal fees. Good call by O'Reilly.

chc 15y ago
IANAL, but I feel pretty confident that you are egregiously misrepresenting that ruling. When you say "works can be retrieved into private possession," that makes it sound like you can pick out a public-domain work and claim it for your own, which is not at all a fair summary of what the court said. It's like hearing that locking somebody up without food or water counts as torture and false imprisonment, and then proceeding to tell everyone, "It's an open question whether you can legally refuse to give someone your food when he asks." I do not believe the question is all that open. As anybody who takes the time to read the ruling will see, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress has the power to make laws that retroactively extend the copyright of certain works that had fallen into the public domain, and specifically said that Congress was empowered to do so if a treaty required it. I do think it's a bad ruling, but it is a far cry from a private party being able to swoop in and snatch works out of the public domain.
Volpe 15y ago
Which ruling was that? do you have a link?
- Jimmie 15y ago
  Here: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57361290/court-allows-re-copyright-of-public-domain-works/ http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57361290/court-allows-re... It was only a few days ago.
  - Volpe 15y ago
    I thought you might be referring to that. That ruling isn't really a precedent for "Public works being re-copyrighted". It was a little more complex and related to a treaty the U.S had agreed to. The works in question were still under copyright in other countries.
grellas 15y ago
Jerf is correct in this. Public domain materials remain so except as modified or improved by the creative work of others and, in that case, only the creative improvements fall under copyright, not the original materials. The recent case of Golan v. Holder held that Congress has the constitutional power to revive the copyright on foreign works that had fallen into the U.S. public domain as part of its treaty-based efforts to promote the arts through reciprocal arrangements with foreign countries. It further held that such "re-copyrighting" doesn't violate the first amendment rights of persons who had relied on the prior public domain status of the works that had been removed from public-domain status. The Golan case is, to me, a really absurd outcome and reflects a weird mix of liberals on the Court (e.g., Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote the opinion) upholding sharp encroachments on free speech and conservatives (who joined in a 6-2 ruling) upholding rather large assertions of constitutional legislative power where a strict construction of the constitutional language ("limited times," etc.) would seem to point in the opposite direction. I think it is a bad decision. But it by no means empowers any private party to try to claim that anything in the public domain somehow shifts back to copyright status by virtue of what that private party does. The case is irrelevant to that issue.

by thyrsus 15y ago

chc 15y ago

IANAL, but I feel pretty confident that you are egregiously misrepresenting that ruling. When you say "works can be retrieved into private possession," that makes it sound like you can pick out a public-domain work and claim it for your own, which is not at all a fair summary of what the court said. It's like hearing that locking somebody up without food or water counts as torture and false imprisonment, and then proceeding to tell everyone, "It's an open question whether you can legally refuse to give someone your food when he asks." I do not believe the question is all that open. As anybody who takes the time to read the ruling will see, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress has the power to make laws that retroactively extend the copyright of certain works that had fallen into the public domain, and specifically said that Congress was empowered to do so if a treaty required it. I do think it's a bad ruling, but it is a far cry from a private party being able to swoop in and snatch works out of the public domain.

Volpe 15y ago

Which ruling was that? do you have a link?

Jimmie 15y ago
Here: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57361290/court-allows-re-copyright-of-public-domain-works/ http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57361290/court-allows-re... It was only a few days ago.
- Volpe 15y ago
  I thought you might be referring to that. That ruling isn't really a precedent for "Public works being re-copyrighted". It was a little more complex and related to a treaty the U.S had agreed to. The works in question were still under copyright in other countries.

grellas 15y ago

Jerf is correct in this. Public domain materials remain so except as modified or improved by the creative work of others and, in that case, only the creative improvements fall under copyright, not the original materials. The recent case of Golan v. Holder held that Congress has the constitutional power to revive the copyright on foreign works that had fallen into the U.S. public domain as part of its treaty-based efforts to promote the arts through reciprocal arrangements with foreign countries. It further held that such "re-copyrighting" doesn't violate the first amendment rights of persons who had relied on the prior public domain status of the works that had been removed from public-domain status. The Golan case is, to me, a really absurd outcome and reflects a weird mix of liberals on the Court (e.g., Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote the opinion) upholding sharp encroachments on free speech and conservatives (who joined in a 6-2 ruling) upholding rather large assertions of constitutional legislative power where a strict construction of the constitutional language ("limited times," etc.) would seem to point in the opposite direction. I think it is a bad decision. But it by no means empowers any private party to try to claim that anything in the public domain somehow shifts back to copyright status by virtue of what that private party does. The case is irrelevant to that issue.