[Free-sklyarov-uk] a win for sanity! and free speech

[Edward Welbourne]

> However, what the constitution says is: (Art I sec 8 clause 8)

>   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;

> To me, this allows congress to make laws saying authors have the right
> to control copies of their works; it *doesn't* give congress the right
> to give authors of some works the right to control copies of other
> people's works because the 1st set of authors are worried that the
> works of 2nd set of authors will reduce the value of their works.

> I wonder if the DMCA could be declared unconstitutional on that
> ground?

good point.  Let us hope so.

Interestingly, the above doesn't explicitly provide for the `right to
control works' to be *transferrable*: the rights are to be secured `to
Authors and Inventors', so Congress at least had the option of making
those rights non-transferrable.  They might, thereby, have secured the
rights against such coercion as is routinely used to oblige authors to
sign over those rights to their publishers.  This failing might well
undermine even pre-DMCA legislation.

The status of copyright in the U.S. might prove to be shakier than we
thought ...

	Eddy.
--
If at first you don't succeed, try doing it the way you were told.