[LINK] Not just SOPA and PIPA - now the US Supreme Court

[Jan Whitaker]

At 10:08 AM 20/01/2012, Janet Hawtin wrote:

>Does that mean those things are still public domain if you are in 
>other countries?
>Europe, Australia?

Sure, because copyright law is specific to a country. There is no 
international copyright law. There are treaties, such as the Berne 
treaty which removed the need for putting a (c) and year. But not all 
countries are signed onto the Berne treaty.


Here's a follow-up story from another source. The details about how 
this goes back to 1994 and is addressing anomolies in terms of the 
law in other countries, not the US itself - e.g. items in those other 
countries were NOT in the public domain - changes the emphasis. I 
think now there may be more to this story than the original one I 
posted about the lost suit. It may be limited to specific categories 
and reactive rather than proactive restrictive generally. Not sure 
how Google is in trouble on so many volumes, though.

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/google-library-in-trouble-as-us-affirms-copyright-20120119-1q8gn.html


Google library in trouble as US affirms copyright

Greg Stohr
January 20, 2012 - 3:00AM

THE US Supreme Court has upheld a federal law giving copyright 
protection to millions of foreign-produced books, movies and musical 
pieces and may undermine Google's effort to create an online library.

The 6-2 ruling backs a law that took works by Alfred Hitchcock, Pablo 
Picasso, Igor Stravinsky and J.R.R. Tolkien out of the public domain, 
barring use without permission of the copyright owner. The decision 
is a victory for the film and music industries and a setback for 
Google, which had said it would lose access to many of the 15 million 
books it wants to make available online.

The court rejected arguments from orchestra conductors, educators, 
performers, film archivists and movie distributors who argued that 
the 1994 law violates the constitutional provision that lets Congress 
set up a copyright system, as well as the constitution's free-speech guarantee.

''We have no warrant to reject the rational judgment Congress made,'' 
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority.

The statute aimed to harmonise US copyright law with rules in other 
countries. The measure applied to works that had been excluded from 
the American copyright system for various reasons, in some cases 
because the US didn't have copyright relations with the author's home 
country and in other cases because the US hadn't yet recognised 
copyrights on sound recordings.

The law gave rights-holders the copyright protection they otherwise 
would have had. Affected works include Tolkien's The Hobbit, hundreds 
of Picasso paintings, several Hitchcock films and the music of 
Stravinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich and other Russian composers.

Congress approved the law to meet obligations stemming from the 
Uruguay Round of international trade talks. The motion-picture and 
music industries pushed for the provision to secure reciprocal 
protection for American works abroad.

Justice Ginsburg said that was a legitimate goal under the 
constitution's copyright clause, which she said let Congress focus on 
encouraging the distribution of existing works and creation of new ones.

''Congress determined that US interests were best served by our full 
participation in the dominant system of international copyright 
protection,'' she wrote. The Obama administration defended the law.

Bloomberg




Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
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Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
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