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Page Number: 59

14 

GOLAN v. HOLDER 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

strictions  work  special  harm.    For  one  thing,  the  foreign 
location  of  restored  works  means  higher  than  ordinary 
administrative  costs.    For  another,  the  statute’s  technical 
requirements make it very difficult to establish whether a
work has had its copyright restored by the statute.  Gard, 
In the Trenches with §104A: An Evaluation of the Parties’ 
Arguments in Golan v. Holder as It Heads to the Supreme 
Court,  64  Vand.  L. Rev.  En  Banc  199,  216–220  (2011) 
(describing  difficulties  encountered  in  compiling  the  in­
formation  necessary  to  create  an  online  tool  to  determine 
whether the statute applies in any given case). 

Worst  of  all,  “restored  copyright”  protection  removes 
material from the public domain.  In doing so, it reverses
the  payment  expectations  of  those  who  used,  or  intended 
to  use,  works  that  they  thought  belonged  to  them.    Were 
Congress  to  act  similarly  with  respect  to  well-established 
property rights, the problem would be obvious.  This stat­
ute  analogously  restricts,  and  thereby  diminishes,  Ameri­
cans’  preexisting  freedom  to  use  formerly  public  domain 
material in their expressive activities. 

Thus,  while  the  majority  correctly  observes  that  the
dissemination-restricting  harms  of  copyright  normally 
present  problems  appropriate  for  legislation  to  resolve, 
ante,  at  31–32,  the  question  is  whether  the  Copyright 
Clause  permits  Congress  seriously  to  exacerbate  such  a
problem by taking works out of the public domain without 
a countervailing benefit.  This question is appropriate for
judicial resolution.  Indeed, unlike Eldred where the Court 
had  to  decide  a  complicated  line-drawing  question—when
is  a  copyright  term  too  long?—here  an  easily  administra­
ble  standard  is  available—a  standard  that  would  require
works  that  have  already  fallen  into  the  public  domain  to
stay there.

The  several,  just  mentioned  features  of  the  present 
statute  are  important,  for  they  distinguish  it  from  other 
copyright  laws.  By  removing  material  from  the  public