[PLUG-TALK] Wanna' Help a Lawyer Defend Against the RIAA?

Keith Lofstrom keithl at kl-ic.com
Tue Jan 2 03:12:44 UTC 2007


On Sun, Dec 31, 2006 at 12:11:09PM -0800, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> Actually the plaintiff is UMG, not the RIAA itself, although clearly the 
> RIAA is "involved". But I think you *do* need to overturn legislation, 
> because the concepts of patents and copyrights are written into the 
> Constitution and if the legislation based thereon is unfair, ambiguous, 
> unenforceable, out of step with technology or wrong in some other way, 
> it should be challenged. If part of that challenge is that someone can 
> be sued for illegal behavior of a relative, fine, but just getting this 
> lawsuit thrown out isn't going to make the legislation go away.

Until it gets to the Supreme Court, which does throw out legislation
that it finds unconstitutional.  And the relevant section of the
Constitution, from section 8:

---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Congress shall have Power:
...
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for
limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their
respective Writings and Discoveries;
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Patents and copyrights are not explicitly mentioned, and are only one
way to do the above;  as currently legislated, patents and copyrights
are well beyond the bounds of the actual constitutional language and
could be challenged on that basis, if done properly.  

Limited times?  What about assignments? Is a musical recording a
"useful" art?  What if the process can be shown to hinder rather
than promote in many cases?

Laws can be overturned in the Supreme Court for purely practical
reasons;  Larry Lessig says that if he had argued the impracticality 
rather than the unconstitutionality of the Sonny Bono law in Eldred,
the justices would have overturned it.

So indeed, this should be defended vogorously.  Law is what the courts
make of it.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs



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