Brewster Kahle, Chairman of the Internet Archive and board member of Project Gutenberg, is shut down by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. From beSpacific:
Stanford Center for Internet and Society: “Kahle v. Gonzales – In this case, two archives ask the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to hold that statutes that extended copyright terms unconditionally ” the Copyright Renewal Act and the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA)” are unconstitutional under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment, and that the Copyright Renewal Act and CTEA together create an “effectively perpetual” term with respect to works first published after January 1, 1964 and before January 1, 1978, in violation of the Constitution“s Limited Times and Promote … Progress Clauses. The Complaint asks the Court for a declaratory judgment that copyright restrictions on orphaned works ” works whose copyright has not expired but which are no longer available ” violate the constitution.”
Opinion, Circuit Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, Brewster Kahle v. Alberto Gonzales, January 22, 2007
For a layspeak analysis of the issues, please read Christopher Sprigman’s post at the Stanford University Center for Internet and Society blog.
… particularly galling is Judge Farris’ utter failure to confront the central question in the case — i.e., whether in shifting copyright from an opt-in to an opt-out system, Congress shifted the traditional contours of copyright. The Supreme Court tells us that when Congress shifts copyright’s traditional contours in a way that might burden speech, that shift is subject to ordinary First Amendment review. Judge Farris proceeds as if the Supreme Court never said this.
For a clear understanding of American copyright law and why the public domain matters to you, read Siva Vaidhyanathan’s Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity [PDFs available at Siva’s site].
Fucking Disney this is… mostly… their fault.