Legal Affairs | How I lost the big one

How I lost the big one, by Lawrence Lessig is a wonderful piece concerning his role in the famous US Supreme Court Case of Eldred vs. Ashcroft. Lawerence Lessigs bottom line "When Eric Eldred's crusade to save the public domain reached the Supreme Court, it needed the help of a lawyer, not a scholar."

If you aren't familiar with the Eldred vs. Ashcroft case here's the brief background from the article:

"In 1998, Robert Frost's poetry collection New Hampshire was slated to pass into the public domain. Eldred wanted to post that collection in his free public library. But Congress got in the way. For the 11th time in four decades, Congress extended the terms of existing copyrights, this time by 20 years. Eldred would not be free to add any works published since 1923 to his collection until 2019. Under the new law, no copyrighted work would pass into the public domain until that year (and not even then, if Congress extended the term again). By contrast, in the same period, more than one million patents will pass into the public domain.

This was the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, or CTEA, enacted in memory of the congressman and former musician. According to his widow, Mary Bono, Sonny Bono believed that 'copyrights should be forever.'

Eldred decided to fight this law. He first resolved to fight it through civil disobedience. In a series of interviews, Eldred announced that he would publish as planned, the CTEA notwithstanding. But because of a second law passed in 1998, the No Electronic Theft Act, his act of publishing would make Eldred a felon--whether or not anyone complained. This was a dangerous strategy for a retired programmer to undertake. " Visit Legal Affairs to read the rest of the story.