I've been away for a while as I've been setting up my new personal server, but I had to interject a bit of very good news for those who may not have heard or may not have understood the whole ramificiations of this:
The Supreme Court has granted certiorari in the case of "Eldred v. Ashcroft" (originally Eldred v. Reno), which seeks to challenge the Sonny Bono copyright term extension act (an act of Congress intended to encourage dead authors to write more :-) as unconstitutional, and indeed seeks to overturn _all_ such term extensions. This is not a ruling--the court has merely agreed to hear the case; but that in itself is a big step. The court hasn't heard a major copyright case since 1985, and the fact that they took this one on is evidence that they think it will set important precedents. If they do rule favorably, _thousands_ of older out-of-print works from dead authors may become available to us and to other Internet projects. Cross your fingers. 0
Woo-hoo!
On Tue, 19 Feb 2002 lcrocker@nupedia.com wrote:
I've been away for a while as I've been setting up my new personal server, but I had to interject a bit of very good news for those who may not have heard or may not have understood the whole ramificiations of this:
The Supreme Court has granted certiorari in the case of "Eldred v. Ashcroft" (originally Eldred v. Reno), which seeks to challenge the Sonny Bono copyright term extension act (an act of Congress intended to encourage dead authors to write more :-) as unconstitutional, and indeed seeks to overturn _all_ such term extensions. This is not a ruling--the court has merely agreed to hear the case; but that in itself is a big step. The court hasn't heard a major copyright case since 1985, and the fact that they took this one on is evidence that they think it will set important precedents. If they do rule favorably, _thousands_ of older out-of-print works from dead authors may become available to us and to other Internet projects. Cross your fingers. 0
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