Source: https://www.mediainstitute.org/2012/04/30/copyright-clause-trumps-free-speech-clause/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 01:59:46+00:00

Document:
The Supreme Court in Golan v. Holder1 upheld Section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA),2 which granted copyright protection to preexisting works of Berne Convention member countries, protected in their country of origin, but lacking protection in the United States. The Court in Golan rejected a challenge to Sec. 514 brought by a consortium of individuals and entities from the world of classical music, such as orchestra conductors, musicians, and music publishers, who once had enjoyed free access to works in the public domain, complaining that Sec. 514 unconstitutionally extended copyright protection to those public domain works. In rejecting the challenge, the Supreme Court once again articulated the balance between the Copyright Clause and the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment in a manner that effectively gave all the trumps to the Copyright Clause.
The Court in Golan, as it had in Eldred, placed special emphasis on the idea/expression dichotomy and the fair use defense as the two classic copyright doctrines that operate in tandem to secure adequate breathing space for expression. The idea/expression dichotomy, now codified in the Copyright Act itself,6 thus disqualifies from copyright protection “any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery”7 that may be embodied in a copyrighted work. Einstein’s theory of relativity may not be copyrighted, though his precise expression describing it may.
1. Golan v. Holder, 132 S. Ct. 873 (2012).
2. 108 Stat. 4976 (codified at 17 U.S.C. §§104A, 109(a)).
3. Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186, 123 S. Ct. 769, 154 L.Ed.2d 683 (2003).
4. Golan v. Holder, 132 S. Ct. 873, 889 (2012).
8. The fair use defense is codified at 17 U.S.C. §107 (“[T]he fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies…, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.”).
9. Golan v. Holder, 132 S. Ct. 873, 892 (2012).
10. Id. at 891 (2012).
13. Id. at 891-92, n.32.
14. Id. (“Neither this challenge nor that raised in Eldred we stress, allege Congress transgressed a generally applicable First Amendment prohibition; we are not faced, for example, with copyright protection that hinges on the author’s viewpoint.”).

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