h'm... It seems I stand corrected on US public domain.
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Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
But it is seizing property... that's clear. Your argument is that it is unclaimed property, therefore no one has standing to claim damages.
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No, that's still not my argument.
I'm pointing out that the expiration of copyright is
not the transfer of ownership.
When copyright expires, all protection is terminated. The works whose copyrights have terminated are referred to collectively as "public domain."
It's not that the content is "unclaimed." It's that it is
unclaimABLE by anyone.
There is no longer any ownership of Shakespeare's plays. You, as a member of the public -- of a totally different country than the original author -- did not receive a certificate of ownership of his works upon birth.
Nowhere in the US copyright laws does it say that when copyright expires on a work, ownership of 1/6,000,000,000 of the work is transferred to every man, woman and child currently in existence.
If the human population expands to 8 billion people, your share and access of PD works does not shrink from 1/6,000,000,000 to 1/8,000,000,000.
Public domain is the
exact opposite of holding intellectual property rights over a work. And the reason why PD works is BECAUSE the rights expired, and are no longer applicable.
The public cannot decide what PD works can or cannot be published; the public does not receive royalties for PD works; the public cannot deny anyone the right to use a PD work for derivative purposes. You cannot sell or trade away your particular share of works in PD.
Again, in the words of the ruling:
Once the term of protection ends, the works do not revest in any rightholder. Instead, the works simply lapse into the public domain. Anyone has free access to the public domain, but no one, after the copyright term has expired, acquires ownership rights in the once-protected works.
The only clearer formulation I can come up with is:
No protection = no ownership = no control = no "seizure."
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Originally Posted by RSE
Yet they have lost access for free, which they already had. Is access a property?
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Nope.
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Originally Posted by RSE
The real legal question is - does anybody have standing to claim damages.
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Again, in this very ruling the SCOTUS said "no."
That was the whole point behind the "vested rights" argument, which was specifically addressed and rejected in III B of the ruling.
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Originally Posted by RSE
As to you claim "§514 is sufficient to satisfy concerns in the Takings Clause." Here is what the ruling said (I just went over it and extract all Taking claim mentions.... Neither of those portions of the ruling states or implied The Court found those to be "sufficient to satisfy concerns in the Takings Clause", only that Congress meant them to satisfy concerns. The COurt has made no ruling on the matter, overt or implied.
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Yes, I read both of those sections. The first was a description of part of the URAA, the second was a footnote in the section that basically rejected the idea that any member of the public has a "vested right" to public domain.
The Takings Clause does not establish ownership or criteria of ownership. Further, no one brought a case saying they deserve compensation greater than what was outlined in §514. Nothing in the opinion criticized the way reliance parties or derivative works were handled, or suggested that it was insufficient compensation.
Seriously, just read the ruling. Copying and pasting paragraphs taken out of context is not helping your argument.