Tag: Copyright Law

Copyright Law and Free Speech After Eldred v. Ashcroft – Article by Michael D. Birnhack

From Volume 76, Number 6 (September 2003)
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Eldred v. Ashcroft, as decided by the Supreme Court in January 2003, added another chapter regarding the relationship between copyright law and freedom of speech to the judicial “chain novel” that has been in the writing for the past three decades. The Court affirmed the constitutionality of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 (“CTEA”), which extended the copyright term by twenty years, both for existing works and for new works. As in previous chapters, the Court reached the conclusion that there is no conflict between the two legal fields. It repeated the judicial sound bite that “the Framers intended copyright itself to be the engine of free expression.” Eldred nicely fits the conflict discourse, which is mostly one of denial. But Eldred also included novel and interesting elements that offer a new direction to the conflict discourse, or at least a potential for redirection.

Eldred raises many intriguing copyright law and constitutional law questions. Here, however, I wish to focus on the possible ramifications the case might have on the conflict discourse with respect to its constitutional level. Surprisingly, Eldred is the first facial constitutional challenge to copyright law in 213 years. As copyright law continues to expand into new territories and in unpredictable ways, and as new bills are introduced at a staggering rate to further the scope of the rights of copyright owners, it is crucial that we study the contours of copyright law. This need is especially acute in light of the Court’s comment that “[w]hen, as in this case, Congress has not altered the traditional contours of copyright protection, further First Amendment scrutiny is unnecessary.”

In this Article, I wish to challenge the constitutional dimension of the judicial rejection of the conflict argument, which concerns the conflict between copyright law and the First Amendment. I will structure the critique along the lines of an important distinction. When we pause and ask what it is that the courts have been denying in rejecting the conflict argument, we see, after close study of over thirty cases that addressed the conflict argument, that, surprisingly, courts reject different things at different points. This leads us to identify two kinds of conflict: one is internal to copyright law, and the other is external to it. These two conflicts derive, respectively, from an internal view of the relationship of copyright law and free speech, and also from an external view.

 

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Copyright Law As a Silencing Restriction on Noninfringing Materials: Unveiling the Scope of Copyright’s Diversity Externalities – Article by Guy Pessach

From Volume 76, Number 5 (July 2003)
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The main argument presented in this Article is that the harms and social costs of copyright cannot be summarized just in terms of enclosure and exclusion. Copyright law, I will argue, also has a silencing effect toward noninfringing creative materials of other independent creators and producers.

Recent scholarly work has emphasized copyright’s “dynamic effect,” that is, the ongoing influence of expansive copyright protection toward an enclosure of the creative commons, and diminishment of cultural diversity. On the whole, however, this broad approach regarding the social cost of copyright in terms of diversity has focused only on instances and frameworks of creative activity in which a secondary author wishes to make use of existing copyrighted material, while a copyright owner (often a media conglomerate) imposes obstacles and limitations against such a use.

The argument presented in this Article goes one step further in exploring the nexus of copyright and diversity. As I will show, an expanded copyright regime diminishes diversity in a more intrusive manner. Extensive copyright protection also has a chilling effect on the variety and diversity of creative works that are both noninfringing and not affiliated to copyright portfolios, or to the communicative activity, of commercialized corporate media. This outcome derives from the advantages extensive copyright protection affords to excessive exposure of corporate media’s creative materials, as well as to the economic and cultural dominance of these media products.

 

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