[Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain

Wed Jun 22 21:15:26 UTC 2011

Kat Walsh writes:

I'm really happy to see us start getting involved in this kind of
> work; I think it too is part of fulfilling our mission. Thanks for
> your work on this, Geoff.
>

Chiming in here -- I'm very happy to see Geoff's announcement too. As Geoff
and a few others here know, I've favored WMF involvement in this case at
least since it was confirmed that the Supreme Court is going to hear it (and
of course I conferred with my EFF colleagues in the runup to the Supreme
Court's granting certiorari in Golan v. Holder). The case is centrally
important to the Wikimedia Foundation's continuing ability to offer free
knowledge and to preserve and provide access to important cultural and
artistic creative works.

I'm also pleased that another former employer of mine, the Information
Society Project at Yale Law School, is filing an amicus brief as well.
Here's the text of the Yale announcement (and a link to a PDF of the brief)
for those who are interested:

"Today, professors and fellows associated with the Information Society
Project at Yale Law School filed an amicus brief in *Golan v. Holder*, a
case that will be heard before the United States Supreme Court this fall. In
this brief, we argue that the Court should apply strict First Amendment
scrutiny to Section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, a law that
allows works to be taken out of the public domain and placed back under
copyright protection. Although the plaintiffs in this case had stipulated
that intermediate scrutiny was the appropriate standard of review under the
First Amendment, we argue that when Congress abrogates a central
constitutional privilege—as it has done here, by stripping away a
traditional speech-protective contour of copyright law—Congress must satisfy
a more rigorous standard of review.

"The brief is available for download here:
http://yaleisp.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Golan-Amicus-Brief-filed.pdf

"Many thanks are due to everyone at the ISP who helped in writing,
researching, and thinking about this brief over the past two months!"

--Mike Godwin