The government has filed their response brief (PDF) in the Eldred v. Ashcroft case. What they’re responding to is Lessig et. al.’s opening brief. I’ll quote choice portions here.
Argument Summary:
- All the lower courts agreed with us.
- Times are different now and the extension act was designed to reflect that. Times are different for previously published works too, so being retroactive makes sense.
- If the acts weren’t retroactive, people would delay publishing things so they’d get a better deal.
- We cannot have a copyright gap. The EU has a 75-year copyright law and we wouldn’t want to lose all our content producers to Europe.
- “Ultimately, petitioners wish to displace Congress’s preference for copyright-based dissemination of works during the CTEA’s prescribed proprietary term, and instead to allow indiscriminate exploitation by public domain copyists like petitioners. But the Constitution assigns such policy choices to Congress, not the courts.”
- Oh geez, they quoted the dictionary (a 1798 dictionary, no less!) definition of “limited” (as in “limited Times”). Isn’t that the lawyer’s equivalent of Godwin’s Law?
- It doesn’t matter that extending copyright doesn’t promote progress because only copyright is required to promote progress, not the limited times provision. ‘The Framers did
not require Congress to select “limited Times that promote” progress, any more than […] allowing Congress to protect only “Authors that promote” progress, or “Writings that promote” progress.’
I am large. I contain multitudes.