Copyright ChallengedThe U.S. Supreme Court justices are dealing with an interesting issue - to grant copyrights to works by foreign authors. The potential stakes are huge and n pit old industry against new. The publishing and movie industries say that robust enforcement of foreign copyrights in the US is essential to ensuring reciprocal protection of their copyrights overseas.
In contrast, companies such as Google (which has digitized millions of public domain works and placed them online) state that their investments could be jeopardized.
In 1994, Congress sought to give protection to foreign works under the Berne Convention, which gives US works reciprocal protection overseas. The 1994 law applies only to works that were never copyrighted under old US copyright law. Nowadays, all foreign artists receive the copyright protection they get in their home countries.
Granting copyright removes a work from the public domain. This means that works that would be free for anyone to use, republish, perform or build upon is not allowed anymore. Works that long had been available to all (e.g., Picasso, Nabokov and J.R.R. Tolkien) could be withdrawn if the owners assert their ownership.
A group including musicians, filmmakers and archivists who rely on public domain works challenged the law. They claim that it exceeds Congress's power to grant copyrights, and infringes on the First Amendment free speech rights.
Anthony Falzone of Stanford Law School stated that once a copyright's "limited time" expires, a work permanently enters the public domain. Since foreign authors never had copyrights at the outset, Congress can't extend them now.
Justice Ginsburg argued that there was a difference between restoring copyrights that had expired and granting copyright for the first time. However, several justices doubt that taking books and music by long-dead authors out of the public domain could promote the "progress" the Constitution sought to spur through copyright.
A decision in the case, Golan v. Holder, is expected soon.
