Eldred v. Ashcroft

When the US Congress passed the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) many felt the law unjustly delayed the entry of works into the public domain. The law extended the duration of most copyrights for 20 years and soon became the focus of this lawsuit.

Researchers of all types were at risk of being adversely affected by the outcome of this case for its ability to greatly restrict their ability to access massive amounts of historically relevant works.

Eric Eldred brought the case against the US Government in the D.C District Court (originally Eldred v. Reno) claiming that the law prevented him from building an online library of older works for his children, and that had it not been for the CTEA, those works would have entered into the public domain and would have been available for his use. Eldred became the battleground for the constitutionality of ever greater expanding copyrights.

Many copyright owners felt that the only manner in which works could be preserved in thier original format until they were available to the public was by extending the copyright duration - thus allowing more returns to be generated from works and allowing those funds to be used for preservation efforts. Others in the copyright community felt that with new technology and massive resources available to "at-home" users, this reasoning was erroneous and served only to remove works from existence by locking them away.

The lower courts found that while it was clearly in the purview of the Congress to set the durations for copyrights, continually extending them might result in endless copyright protections that would have a deleterious effect on the public domain.

Briefs about the case can be found here.

Updates

Supreme Court Rules Against Eldred

Related Categories

Copyright