

Supreme Court Takes Up Scholars' Rights - grellas
http://chronicle.com/article/A-Professors-Fight-Over/127700/

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iqster
Excellent article. The Mickey Mouse Protection Act always made me uneasy.
What's to say they don't extend protection yet again? Perpetual copyrights are
no less than tyranny in a media society.

This article talks about an instance where works that had previously gone into
public domain were brought out of it. Granted, this was done to bring US law
in line with International Treaties. It still feels wrong though.

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protomyth
At this point, I wish (as a compromise) that they changed trademark law and
stopped (or rolled back) the extension of copyrights. It would seem that
Disney and Co. could live with no else being allowed to make "Mickey Mouse"
(substitute character here) media but allowing the older works to pass into
the public domain. It is not a great compromise, but it would probably allow
older works to actually be available and preserved.

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tibbon
Wow, I didn't realize that they actually took some stuff that _was_ in the
public domain and put it back under copyright. Very very interesting.

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adestefan
Note that the retroactive copyright only applies to foreign works. The Berne
Convention requires a country to apply the same copyright protections to
foreign works as the country of origin. It began as an effort to standardize
copyright terms throughout Europe in the late 19th century. The US didn't
become a participant until 1989 which is why the retroactive law was passed.

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TheAmazingIdiot
US Constitution Article 1, Section 9, Paragraph 3

"No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."

Will a legal scholar or similarly minded person please explain why this isn't
an ex post facto (after the fact) law?

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adestefan
You're looking for Calder v Bull where the Supreme Court decided that ex post
facto only applies to criminal law and not civil law. It makes a distinction
between a law that changes punishment and law for criminal proceedings or a
law that is merely retroactive.

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TheAmazingIdiot
If I'm reading correctly from Wikipedia, that decision was somewhat ambiguous.
It either indicated that the State legislature had the right to order a re-
review of a will, overturning a previous judgement.

SCOTUS seemed to me more concerned about rights of a state legislature.

Also, the Constitution does make the distinction between civil and criminal.
It says "Make no law", which is in the similar wording that the Bill of
Rights, Amendment 1 states.

