Playing the Devil's Advocate here, I can understand the reasons given by the judges in this case. From the article (my emphasis):
Quote:
The court, however, was sympathetic to the plaintiffs’ argument. Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Ginsburg said “some restriction on expression is the inherent and intended effect of every grant of copyright.” But the top court, with Justice Elena Kagan recused, said Congress’ move to re-copyright the works to comport with an international treaty was more important.
For a variety of reasons, the works at issue, which are foreign and produced decades ago, became part of the public domain in the United States but were still copyrighted overseas. In 1994, Congress adopted legislation to move the works back into copyright, so U.S. policy would comport with an international copyright treaty known as the Berne Convention.
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While I would not be happy to see anything that was once in the public domain go back into copyright, I can see the usefulness of having an international standard. As it is, it's a major headache for sites like MobileRead that have their own public domain libraries to continually ensure the materials in their libraries don't run afoul of the laws of more than one country.