Stanford CIS

CIS To Move Forward in Golan v. Ashcroft

By Stanford Center for Internet and Society on

Golan v. Ashcroft is a case to defend the public domain.  Like Eldred v. Ashcroft, the Golan case challenged the Sonny Bono Act's extension of the terms of subsisting copyrights, but additionally, it challenges the Uruguay Round Agreements Act's provisions retroactively granting copyright to certain works that were already in the public domain.  The URAA removes thousands of works from the public domain, thereby depriving the public of our rights to freely use works that were, for many years, available to all.
Last fall, the Colorado court where the Golan case is pending decided to effectively stay the case pending the Supreme Court's decision in Eldred.  Now that Eldred has been decided, the Golan case can go forward.  The Supreme Court's majority opinion in Eldred says nothing that suggests that the URAA's restoring copyright to works already in the public domain is constitutional.  CIS is eager to move forward with this action to defend the rights of the public.

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