New subject: [Foundation-l] Court: Congress can't put public domain back into copyright

6 Apr 2009

--- On Mon, 4/6/09, Chad &lt;innocentkiller(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

...
  From: Chad &lt;innocentkiller(a)gmail.com&gt;
 Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Court: Congress can't put public domain back into
copyright
 To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"
&lt;foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt;
 Date: Monday, April 6, 2009, 11:09 AM
 On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 11:54 AM,
 GerardM &lt;gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com&gt;
 wrote:
  Hoi,
 This is of sufficient merit that I do it this way.
 Thanks,
 GerardM

 Aan u verzonden door GerardM via Google Reader: Court:  Congress can't
  put public domain back into copyright via Ars
Technica  door
  nate(a)arstechnica.com  (Nate Anderson) op
6-4-09
  In 1994, Congress jammed a batch of foreign books
and  movies back into
  the copyright closet. They had previously fallen
into  the public domain
  for a variety of technical reasons (the author
hadn't  renewed the
  rights with the US Copyright Office, the authors
of  older works hadn't
  included a copyright notice, etc.) and companies
and  individuals had
  already started reusing the newly public works.
Did  Congress have the
  right to put a stop to this activity by shoving
the  works back into
  copyright? On Friday, a federal court said no.
 "Traditional contours of copyright"
 1994's Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) brought US  intellectual
  property law in line with that of other
countries.  Section 514 of URAA
  better aligned US copyright law with the
international  Berne
  Convention, one of the earliest international
 intellectual property
  treaties. Though Berne had first been signed back
in  1886, the US
  hadn't joined up until a century later, in
1988.
 Click here to read the rest of this article

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 The URL, for those wanting the rest of the story:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/court-congress-cant-put-pub…

While this is definitely encouraging news, we might want to hold off on changing our
evaluation of URAA restorations.  The tenth circuit doesn't include Florida.  I
don't know exactly what the next level of appeals would be, but we might want to wait
for a ruling that covers WMF servers before we act on it.  I hope these restorations
continue to be struck down in the courts.  It will be much simpler to determine copyright
if they go away.

Birgitte SB

Re: [Foundation-l] Court: Congress can't put public domain back into copyright