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

[Birgitte SB]

--- On Mon, 4/6/09, Chad <innocentkiller at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Chad <innocentkiller at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Court: Congress can't put public domain back into copyright
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Monday, April 6, 2009, 11:09 AM
> On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 11:54 AM,
> GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>
> 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 at 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
> >
> >
> > Dingen die u vanaf hier kunt doen:
> > - Abonneren op Ars Technica met Google Reader
> > - Aan de slag met Google Reader om eenvoudig al uw
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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-public-domain-back-into-copyright.ars
> 


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