Conductors Pose First Challenge to Copyright Law
- From: J Flenner <varney@[redacted]>
- Subject: Conductors Pose First Challenge to Copyright Law
- Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 06:36:16 -0500
http://www.law.com/cgi-bin/nwlink.cgi?ACG=ZZZUOX6WIUC
Conductors Pose First Challenge to Copyright Law
David Horrigan
The National Law Journal
November 27, 2001
In what is apparently the first constitutional
challenge to a 7-year-old federal copyright
law, plaintiffs, including two orchestra
conductors, have filed suit against the U.S.
government in federal court in Denver,
challenging a law that grants copyright
protection to foreign works that were formerly
in the public domain.
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In one instance, a plaintiff, New York
conductor Richard Kapp, who runs a recording
label, found that the URAA pushed the costs for
sheet music for works by such composers as
Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Prokofiev from
less than $100 to at least $1,000 -- and this
only to rent the music.
"After the performance, Kapp must return the
copy back to the asserted restored copyright
holder, thus requiring Kapp's orchestra to pay
several thousand dollars more should it wish to
perform the work again," the plaintiff's
complaint states.
<snip>
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[Moderator: This is a challenge to the GATT-prompted copyright
restorations I talk about in
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/renewals.html and elsewhere.
The suit, if successful, could also bring back to the US public
domain, and hence make possible to put online, many books
first published abroad that never had their copyrights renewed
in the US. The article also mentions challenges to the
1998 copyright term extension act, previously discussed in
this forum. - JMO]