Comment by Ryland (not verified), posted January 26, 2007 - 8:52am
The 9th Circuit actually did get it right, it is a good decision and the only reason for it being so short is they did not need to go any further.
Depending on how you try to split the hairs of what "traditional contours of copyright protection" means--the Supreme Court in Eldred did look at the issue of the 1976 Act changing the way the terms of protection were calculated (if you assume that this changed the traditional contours of protection--which I reserve comment on), they state this right at the beginning of the Eldred decision and state that the CTEA was in line with this "change". Life plus 50 years has been the tradition for 30 years in the US (again, if you want to call that a "change") and since at least 1900 in the world--so actually life plus 50 is pretty traditional and if you really want to argue this, life plus actually goes further back than 1900.
But more to the point, the Supreme Court correctly pointed out that the First Amendment is taken into account because it does not protect ideas and there is the fair use and library exception provisions--these have become "traditional contours of copyright protection" which did not change with the passage of the CTEA. Very simple and the Ninth Circuit saw this and issued a simple opinion stating this. It is not really sad, the good side of it is that we have another decision on the books supporting Eldred.
The 9th Circuit actually did get it right, it is a good decision and the only reason for it being so short is they did not need to go any further.
Depending on how you try to split the hairs of what "traditional contours of copyright protection" means--the Supreme Court in Eldred did look at the issue of the 1976 Act changing the way the terms of protection were calculated (if you assume that this changed the traditional contours of protection--which I reserve comment on), they state this right at the beginning of the Eldred decision and state that the CTEA was in line with this "change". Life plus 50 years has been the tradition for 30 years in the US (again, if you want to call that a "change") and since at least 1900 in the world--so actually life plus 50 is pretty traditional and if you really want to argue this, life plus actually goes further back than 1900.
But more to the point, the Supreme Court correctly pointed out that the First Amendment is taken into account because it does not protect ideas and there is the fair use and library exception provisions--these have become "traditional contours of copyright protection" which did not change with the passage of the CTEA. Very simple and the Ninth Circuit saw this and issued a simple opinion stating this. It is not really sad, the good side of it is that we have another decision on the books supporting Eldred.