The NYT reported on a Supreme Court ruling that retroactively granted copyright protection to foreign works that had previously been in the public domain. As Justice Breyer argued in dissent, this action appears to exceed the constitutional authority given to Congress, which ties copyrights to a specific public policy goal: "to promote the progress of science and useful arts."

In this case, since the copyright is explicitly being applied retroactively to work that has already been produced, it cannot possibly be viewed as providing incentive to develop the material. This means that the government is assigning a monopoly to items that were formerly in the public domain and available at no cost. It is prepared to arrest people and throw them in jail if they don't respect this government granted monopoly.

Given the large number of political groups complaining about activist judges and big government intervention into people's lives, it would have been useful to include some of their views about the court's action. Perhaps this can be addressed in a follow-up piece.

Comments (4)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/hide comments

(Only one link allowed per comment)

Show/hide comment form

Powered by Azrul's Jom Comment for Joomla!