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Page Number: 30.0

26 

GOLAN v. HOLDER 

Opinion of the Court 

tions  available  to  certain  users  to  mitigate  the  CTEA’s
impact). 

B 
Petitioners  attempt  to  distinguish  their  challenge  from
the  one  turned  away  in  Eldred.  First  Amendment  inter-
ests  of  a  higher  order  are  at  stake  here,  petitioners  say, 
because  they—unlike  their  counterparts  in  Eldred— 
enjoyed “vested rights” in works that had already entered 
the  public  domain.    The  limited  rights  they  retain  under
copyright law’s “built-in safeguards” are, in their view, no
substitute for the unlimited use they enjoyed before §514’s 
enactment.  Nor,  petitioners  urge,  does  §514’s  “unprece-
dented” foray into the public domain possess the historical 
pedigree  that  supported  the  term  extension  at  issue  in 
Eldred.  Brief for Petitioners 42–43. 

However  spun,  these  contentions  depend  on  an  argu-
ment  we  considered  and  rejected  above,  namely,  that  the
Constitution  renders  the  public  domain  largely  untouch-
able  by  Congress.  Petitioners  here  attempt  to  achieve 
under the banner of the First Amendment what they could 
not win under the Copyright Clause: On their view of the 
Copyright Clause, the public domain is inviolable; as they 
read  the  First  Amendment,  the  public  domain  is  policed 
through  heightened  judicial  scrutiny  of  Congress’  means
and ends.  As we have already shown, see supra, at 13–19, 
the text of the Copyright Clause and the historical record
scarcely  establish  that  “once  a  work  enters  the  public 
domain,”  Congress  cannot  permit  anyone—“not  even  the 
creator—[to]  copyright  it,”  501  F. 3d,  at  1184.    And  noth-
ing  in  the  historical  record,  congressional  practice,  or  our
own jurisprudence warrants exceptional First Amendment 
solicitude  for  copyrighted  works  that  were  once  in  the