The Public Domain Enhancement Act

EFFORT TO RECLAIM PUBLIC DOMAIN SCORES VICTORY

March 16, 2004

Court Allows Challenge (Golan v. Ashcroft) to Re-copyrighting Public Domain Works to Proceed

Stanford, CA - A major roadblock to reclaiming content for the public
domain was removed today, when a U.S. District Court ruled that a
case challenging re-copyrighting of public domain materials could
proceed despite the government's insistence that the Supreme
Court's decision in Eldred v. Ashcroft invalidated the claims.

"Lawrence Golan, the conductor of the University of Denver's Lamont
Symphony Orchestra, and the other artists involved will get their
chance to show how severely they have been harmed by Congress's
removal of numerous artistic works from the public domain by the
grant of so-called 'restored' copyrights." said Edward Lee, Assistant
Professor of Law at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law
and one of the attorneys for the Plaintiffs.

In the case, Golan and the other plaintiffs argued that Section 514
of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) is unconstitutional
because re-copyrighting works does not promote progress as required
by the Copyright Clause, abridges speech in violation of the First
Amendment, and violates Due Process by depriving the public of
the free availability of public domain works. Section 514 of the
URAA was enacted in 1994 after the Uruguay Agreement negotiations
and is now codified at 17 U.S.C. 104(a). While striking one term
extension challenge based on the Eldred case, US District Court
Chief Judge Lewis T. Babcock, rejected the government's Motion to
Dismiss the case and allowed the plaintiff's three remaining
claims to proceed.

Plaintiffs Lawrence Golan and Richard Kapp are internationally acclaimed
conductors whose symphonies planned to perform musical works that
were in the public domain, but re-copyrighted by the URAA. As a result,
these and other orchestras can no longer perform whole classes of works
by great foreign composers. Plaintiffs Ron Hall and John McDonough are
film lovers who preserve and distribute old movies and television shows.
Because URAA re-copyrights many public domain movies and shows,
Hall and McDonough can no longer sell or afford to preserve these old
films, which soon may be lost forever due to the decomposition of the film.

The plaintiffs are represented by Elizabeth Rader with the Center for
Internet and Society (CIS) at Stanford Law School, by Edward Lee,
Assistant Professor of Law at The Ohio State University Moritz College
of Law and by Hugh Gottschalk and Carolyn Fairless at Wheeler, Trigg
& Kennedy in Denver, CO.

Lawrence Lessig, founder and Director of CIS and a Stanford Law
Professor said, "We look forward to the opportunity to convince the court
that taking works out of the public domain doesn't promote progress, it
harms progress." Professor Lessig is the author of Free Culture, a book
about the importance of a shared public domain, which will be released
later this month.

The case will now move forward and the plaintiffs will have an
opportunity to show that the challenged law is unconstitutional.

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