Mickey Mouse 1, intellectual commons 0

Posted Jan 18, 2003 5:11 UTC (Sat) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link]

the court made the right decision is that it is the **Congress** which is empowered to make this decision.

I've thought about that one too (I tend to be a constructionist (and an unapologetic Scalia fan)) but I thought Prof. Lessig made a very good argument: that if the Court cannot say "xxx years is too long", no matter the value of xxx, then the phrase "for a limited Time" is meaningless.

The other reason the Court has a right to be involved is the First Amendment issue. I admit I didn't see the relevance at first, but with the erosion of what is considered fair use, and the expansion of what is considered derivative works, copyright law can increasingly be used to chill and gag speech. The Court opinion gives a nod to this (striking down the appeals court declaration that copyright law is "categorically" immune to First Amendment challenges) but plays down its importance, perhaps either not realising or choosing to ignore what the DMCA has done in that arena.

If we don't like the laws, lets elect legislators who will change them. That's democracy.

You mean representative democracy, and the biggest problem with it is that it is too coarse-grained. It's not like copyright law is the only issue I think about when going to the polls. That's why I'm also a Federalist. State and local governments offer me (the voter) better choices and more transparency. In my book, Washington DC is just there to keep down the chaos - you know, print the money, deliver the mail and wage war against terrorism^W^W.