image from wikipedia

Thanks to this little agreement called the Berne Convention the Supreme Court granted the right for public domain works to be re-copyrighted. Apparently the world is bigger than we thought, and in other countries those works are still under copyright and because the USA is friendly to those nations the US simply says, sorry you can’t use that public domain work, insert snicker here.

So thanks to this, Congress can take books, musical compositions and other works out of the public domain. This is going to be a huge problem for any company that relies on this for their livelihood.

 Justice Ginsberg had this to say “some restriction on expression is the inherent and intended effect of every grant of copyright.” 

With a wonderful 6-2 rating it is the majority of the court felt “territory that works may never exit.” Justice Breyer and Justice Alito argued this is against the purpose of copyright because “does not encourage anyone to produce a single new work.” I’d have to agree. If I was a composer I would now be applying for unemployment because some of the most popular redone works are symphonies and orchestras. This is how strangulation of copyright kills new jobs and inhibits creativity. Even if you wanted to put a twist on a public domain work and make it modern you better now cough up some dough and pay some licensing fees to these overseas monopolist. 

It is apparent that the Supreme Court favors copyright because it was only back in 2002 when it backed up Congress with the right to extend copyright of the life of the author + 50 years after death to the life of the author + a staggering 70 years after death. The top court Justice Kagan felt it was more important for Congress to comply with an international treaty to recopyright these works. Yep and people we still have ACTA coming our way as well.