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https://medium.lessig.org/freeing-mickey-unconstitutionally-de54c4ff30a9>
"The Walt Disney Corporation has received a wide range of benefits from
American governments. None has been as important as the ever-increasing term of
copyright. Beginning in 1962, Congress extended the term of existing copyrights
eleven times, including the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998,
which extended existing copyrights by 20 years.
I litigated the constitutional challenge to those term extensions. The
Constitution gives Congress the power “to promote the Progress of Science” “by
securing” “to Authors” an “exclusive Right to their” “Writings” “for limited
Times.” The repeated extension of copyright terms, I argued, was inconsistent
with “limited Times,” and the purpose of the clause, “to promote … Progress.”
(The latter point Nobel Prize-winning Milton Friedman called a “no brainer”
when joining a brief challenging the extension in the Supreme Court. )
In 2001, the DC Circuit upheld the extensions, Judge David Sentelle dissenting.
Sentelle relied upon the then-ascending jurisprudence of Supreme Court
conservatives eager to set the “outer limits” to the powers of Congress, by
interpreting the text of the Constitution more strictly. In 2002, the Supreme
Court affirmed the decision of the DC Circuit. None of the then-five
conservatives on the Court explained just why they were declining Judge
Sentelle’s invitation.
Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) has now introduced legislation to strip Disney of
its extended terms. The Copyright Clause Restoration Act of 2022 would restore
a 28-year copyright term, renewable once if the copyright owner requests it.
The bill would apply retroactively to any copyright owned by a “person” who has
a “market capitalization of more than $150,000,000” and is in either the motion
picture or arts and entertainment industries. There are reportedly about 70
companies that would be affected by the retroactive elimination of copyright
protection — including, most obviously, Disney."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
