Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Harry_The_Hipster]

Haven't had an opportunity to reflect on it, but those who want to form their own impressions can read the full opinion at:

http://news.com.com/2100-1040-980829.html

What concerns me is the over-all tone: that the Courts have to defer to Congress on issues of policy affecting copyright and intellectual property. That suggests that the 'Fair Use' doctrine - which some people thought was derived from the Constitution - may in fact be open to legislative curtailment. And we all know what that means, since money votes.

Judge Ginsburg's discussion of 'Fair Use' intimates a much more limited scope than the Sony case: some discussion of fair use for parody and educational purposes, but there is no reference in that portion of her opinion to consumer's rights to replicate artistic content for no-commercial purposes. Furthermore, she suggests that Congress has the right todefine the scope of copyright under the Constitution, which taken literally means the courts can't second guess our elected reps if they decide that copying for personal use isn't 'fair use'.

Somewhere I suppose the curtailment of rights to reproduce protected material could violate the First Amendment, but I'm not sure the cut-off point is where we liked to think it was.

Now that the hardware and content providers have agreed on a legislative strategy (no curtailment of hardware functionality, no expansion or codification of consumer rights), I have a nasty feeling the walls are closing in on us.

Hope I'm wrong. Interested in other opinions on this one. I'm posting in the main forum because I think this impacts all users, and there isn't much traffic over there on the Emusic Board.

HTH

[zevele10]

HTH
there is a problem:
your link is the link i gave on another post concerning Tivo.
Not the link you wanted to give i assume

[JimH]

Here's a link:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=514&ncid=514&e=18&u=/ap/20030116/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_copyrights_19

It is slightly amazing that the rules can change after the fact, but as you say, anything can happen in Congress when the price is right.

Campaign finance laws are the root of that problem.  But it's not in Congress's self interest to fix them.

[Harry_The_Hipster]

Sorry about the screwed-up link.
Must have been distracted by the bad news.

Rather than subject you to the infinite tedium of analyzing the opinion, I'll give you my bottom line. The doctrine of fair use is in rather deep trouble. Justice Ginsburg goes out of her way to use very limited examples of fair use (parody and education), totally ignores the big issue of the day: consumers rights to replicate music, art and ideas for purely personal use. Strong suggestion that only the uses specifically mentioned in the statute are protected, and that's enough for constiutional purposes.

She adds to the problems by stating that First Amendment (constitutional) protection is a big issue when we're voicing our own ideas or producing our own works of art, but is much less so when we're claiming a right to reproduce someone else's.

One of the dissents complains that the Court is basically abandoning the field of copyright law and protection to Congress, and that there are very few if any constitutional issues involved when Congess makes the rules. Well, if Congress makes the rules, we know where that is heading: Jack Valenti's expense allowance is probably bigger than the aggregate income of all forum users. If Congress has ever done anything for consumers in this area, it must have been an oversight.

(For those unfamiliar with Smiling Jack, he is the hired gun for the Motion Pictures Association, which for sheer brass and venality makes the recording industry look like the Salvation Army.)

Not very pretty reading.

HTH