Summit Daily reports on a decision of the US 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. The court ordered the District Court to examine s.514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act under the First Amendment (freedom of speech), as it changed “the traditional contours of copyright protection in a manner that implicates plaintiff's right to free expression."
According to Lawrence Lessig, the case is notable because it means that copyright law isn’t just challengable on free speech grounds when the fair use exception is changed, or when the idea/expression dichotomy is attacked. Instead it can be revisited whenever the conto
urs of copyright are altered in a way that implicates freedom of expression.
The section under review in this change extends life+70 protection in the US to foreign works.
The IPKat is all for copyright protection being balanced with the needs of free speech (though some interference is necessary by the very nature of copyright protection). However, he can’t see a principled distinction between this balance when it comes to works of foreign authorship, as opposed to US works.
