Advocacy
Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Copyright Extension
On January 15, 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to uphold the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA), which extends the term of copyright by twenty years. Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg stated that “we are not at liberty to second-guess congressional determinations and policy judgments of this order, however debatable or arguably unwise they may be.” The 7-to-2 decision in Eldred v. Ashcroft clears the way for further unchecked copyright-extension laws in the future. Some analysts see a trend toward the establishment of permanent copyright, and fear the demise of the public domain. The dissenters were Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen G. Breyer.CAA filed an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief in the Eldred v. Ashcroft case in spring 2002. The brief, drafted by CAA Counsel Jeffrey Cunard of Debevoise & Plimpton, presented the researcher’s point of view, detailing the hardships of obtaining permission to use older works, as well as the difficulty (given litigation-averse publishers) of applying the fair-use provisions of the copyright law.