Re: [dvd-discuss] Eldred v. Ashcroft Accepted for Review by SCOTUS

["Michael A Rolenz" <Michael.A.Rolenz(at)aero.org>]

I can just hope SCOTUS has read their Macauley....if more people accessed 
the public domain, or had access to it, they might discover just what it's 
for and why as well as how relevant much of it really is. . Macauley, 
which is available online for free, has more to say about copyright and is 
more entertaining to read than any of the drivel found on the WIPO website

Actually your point about "Dead-tree and silver-disc publishing, distribution, and
marketing  of public domain works is an expensive, difficult
undertaking " as I read that I was struck by the thought that the Digital, with its 
ability to be transmitted  easily and copied for thousands of times longer 
than analog formats is almost a ideal medium to perserve and distribute 
the public domain-in a way that has NEVER happened before.... .002 may be 
right that there is more here than just having "winners pay for losers"




John Schulien <jms@uic.edu>
Sent by: owner-dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu
02/19/02 04:38 PM
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        Subject:        [dvd-discuss] Eldred v. Ashcroft Accepted for Review by SCOTUS


> What's with the headline: "Supreme Court to Intervene in Internet
> Copyright Dispute"? Eldred may publish on the Internet, but the legal
> questions have nothing to do with the internet.

True, but practically, this case will decide the future of
peer-to-peer.  If Eldred prevails, an enormous volume
of older works -- mostly songs and movies -- will become
legally available for Napster-type file-sharing.

Dead-tree and silver-disc publishing, distribution, and
marketing  of public domain works is an expensive, difficult
undertaking -- very hard to pull off while making a profit.

However, as Napster showed, there are plenty of people
who will make an incremental contribution of their personal
favorite works, without expectation of profit.

Internet  publishing  of public domain works is a easy as
getting DSL and installing a web server on your PC.
As Napster showed, the internet is the future of
non-commercial distribution of works.

So yes, this case isn't directly internet related, but the
practical implications of the re-introduction of copyright
expiration fall mostly in the realm of the internet.