Final Protective Fire

Saturday, January 18, 2003

 

One of my three readers emailed me asking for my comments on the Eldred copyright case from the Supreme Court.

Intellectual property law is an area of great interest to me, but this case didn't get me as excited as you might think. I have a few quick thoughts, you'll find more comprehensive commentary at Eugene Volokh's blog.

My own thoughts are that those who have called this a "blow" to the limited government ideology on the Supreme Court are wrong. That group on the Supreme Court have several important beliefs, one of which is that of deference to Congress in its role in creating legislation. The Constitutional provision provides that Congress may grant copyrights for terms of "limited time" but puts no bounds on how long otherwise. So there is no textual basis for striking down the term extension in general. There is no part of the ideology of limited enumerated powers in the Constitution that allows the Supreme Court to invent an actual number as time limit where the Constitution doesn't have one.

I believe that Congress shouldn't have extended the copyright act's terms. That said, I think that the decision to consider extending terms of existing works that same as extending the terms of future works more troubling. "Juan " on Eugene Volokh's blog discusses the constitutional argument about this in more detail.

UPDATE:Man Without Qualities has a large number of interesting posts on Eldred. I am too lazy to link to all of them so just scroll down as he has quite a few. I think that this was his first. Much of his discussion involves treatment of the economic questions such as here. I must admit that I find the economic discussions unexciting, which is unusual as economics is an interest of mine. So I can't say that I endorse MWQ's positions but there is much there to think upon. But as I said, there are more discussion on his blog - don't miss them.

Robin 10:41 AM