Politics

In one of the (many) stories I’ve been keeping an eye on but haven’t babbled much about, the Supreme Court has been deciding whether Congress overrode the Constitution in 1998 by extending copyrights to stay in effect until 70 years after the death of the creator — 95 years if the copyright is owned by a corporation.

Copyright was originally intended to give an author/creator a specific, finite amount of time to reap profits and rewards from a created work before it was released into the public domain. Originally set to 14 years, the active term has been extended bit by bit over the years. The primary mover behind the extension of copyright terms in recent years, including this most recent extention, has been Disney. Every time Mickey Mouse was in danger of entering the public domain, Disney challenged the copyright laws, and got the terms extended, allowing them to retain control over Mickey.

(Irony alert: This from a company who counts among their many hits “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Treasure Island,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “Snow White,” “Oliver and Company,” and many other works that they were able to create films from because the original works were in the public domain and not restricted by copyright any longer.)

Today’s Supreme Court ruling upheld this extention, however. Nothing that’s not already in the public domain is likely to get into the public domain anytime soon. Free-speech advocates are in mourning.

More information:

• Lawrence Lessig (the lawyer challenging the case): With deep sadness: “The Supreme Court has rejected our challenge to the Sonny Bono Law.”
• BoingBoing: Supreme Court rules against Eldred, Alexandria burns: “That’s the Supreme Court case that Larry Lessig argued to establish the principle that the continuous extension of copyright at the expense of the public domain is unconstitutional. This blog will be wearing a black arm-band for the next day in mourning for our shared cultural heritage, as the Library of Alexandria burns anew.”
• AP: Supreme Court Keeps Copyright Protections: “The 7-2 ruling, while not unexpected, was a blow to Internet publishers and others who wanted to make old books available online and use the likenesses of a Mickey Mouse cartoon and other old creations without paying high royalties. Hundreds of thousands of books, movies and songs were close to being released into the public domain when Congress extended the copyright by 20 years in 1998.”
• BoingBoing (in Feb 2002): What the copyright ruling really means: “The argument hinges on the constitutionality of the extensions to copyright. The framers originally established a ~~17-year~~ 14-year (thanks, Larry!) term of copyright, as part of the constitutional mandate to provide creators with “a limited monopoly” on their works. With the continual extension (11 times in the past 40 years) of copyright’s term, the monopoly is no longer “limited” in any real sense of the word (the present term of copyright is author’s life plus 70 years, or 95 years for works that belong to corporations).”
• Slashdot: Disney Wins, Eldred (and everybody else) loses: “Did you see Treasure Planet [imdb.com]? Yeah, me neither, I heard it was horrible. But either way, Treasure Island was a book written by Robert Louis Stevenson [kirjasto.sci.fi] in 1883. 114 years from now, if my great-great grandchild wanted to write The Lion King in space (the only discernable difference between Treasure Island and Treasure Planet), Disney would NEVER give them the right to make it, and would sue the pants off them if they tried.” (From the discussion thread.)
• Washington Post: Eldred vs. Ashcroft: A Primer: “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Congress has “wide leeway” to interpret copyright law as set out by the U.S. Constitution. Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer were the lone dissenters, saying that extending copyright terms repeatedly denies Americans “free access to the products of inventive and artistic genius.””

Hot damn. Just when I thought that the media was fairly useless, pointless, and completely under the Governmental thumb, along comes something like this transcript from a press breifing with Ari Fleischer:

MR. FLEISCHER: Good afternoon and happy New Year to everybody. The President began his day with an intelligence briefing, followed by an FBI briefing. Then he had a series of policy briefings. And this afternoon, the President will look forward to a Cabinet meeting where the President will discuss with members of his Cabinet his agenda for the year. The President is going to focus on economic growth, making America a more compassionate country, and providing for the security of our nation abroad and on the homefront.

And with that, I’m more than happy to take your questions. Helen.

Q: At the earlier briefing, Ari, you said that the President deplored the taking of innocent lives. Does that apply to all innocent lives in the world? And I have a follow-up.

MR. FLEISCHER: I refer specifically to a horrible terrorist attack on Tel Aviv that killed scores and wounded hundreds. And the President, as he said in his statement yesterday, deplores in the strongest terms the taking of those lives and the wounding of those people, innocents in Israel.

Q: My follow-up is, why does he want to drop bombs on innocent Iraqis?

MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, the question is how to protect Americans, and our allies and friends —

Q: They’re not attacking you.

MR. FLEISCHER: — from a country —

Q: Have they laid the glove on you or on the United States, the Iraqis, in 11 years?

MR. FLEISCHER: I guess you have forgotten about the Americans who were killed in the first Gulf War as a result of Saddam Hussein’s aggression then.

Q: Is this revenge, 11 years of revenge?

MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, I think you know very well that the President’s position is that he wants to avert war, and that the President has asked the United Nations to go into Iraq to help with the purpose of averting war.

Q: Would the President attack innocent Iraqi lives?

MR. FLEISCHER: The President wants to make certain that he can defend our country, defend our interests, defend the region, and make certain that American lives are not lost.

Q: And he thinks they are a threat to us?

MR. FLEISCHER: There is no question that the President thinks that Iraq is a threat to the United States.

Q: The Iraqi people?

MR. FLEISCHER: The Iraqi people are represented by their government. If there was regime change, the Iraqi —

Q: So they will be vulnerable?

MR. FLEISCHER: Actually, the President has made it very clear that he has not dispute with the people of Iraq. That’s why the American policy remains a policy of regime change. There is no question the people of Iraq —

Q: That’s a decision for them to make, isn’t it? It’s their country.

MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, if you think that the people of Iraq are in a position to dictate who their dictator is, I don’t think that has been what history has shown.

Q: I think many countries don’t have — people don’t have the decision — including us.

I have no idea who “Helen” is, but I’d dearly love to. She’s got more cojones than most people I know, that’s for sure.

(Via Megnut)

This story will probably be all over the ‘net in a day or two, if it isn’t already, but it’s something that really needs to be read to be believed. A husband and his pregnant wife were attempting to fly out of Portland to go to a friend’s wedding when they were both pulled off for extra “security screening”…

After some more grumbling on my part they eventually finished with me and I went to retrieve our luggage from the x-ray machine. Upon returning I found my wife sitting in a chair, crying. Mary rarely cries, and certainly not in public. When I asked her what was the matter, she tried to quell her tears and sobbed, “I’m sorry…it’s…they touched my breasts…and…” That’s all I heard. I marched up to the woman who’d been examining her and shouted, “What did you do to her?” Later I found out that in addition to touching her swollen breasts — to protect the American citizenry — the employee had asked that she lift up her shirt. Not behind a screen, not off to the side — no, right there, directly in front of the hundred or so passengers standing in line. And for you women who’ve been pregnant and worn maternity pants, you know how ridiculous those things look. “I felt like a clown,” my wife told me later. “On display for all these people, with the cotton panel on my pants and my stomach sticking out. When I sat down I just lost my composure and began to cry. That’s when you walked up.”

Of course when I say she “told me later,” it’s because she wasn’t able to tell me at the time, because as soon as I demanded to know what the federal employee had done to make her cry, I was swarmed by Portland police officers. Instantly. Three of them, cinching my arms, locking me in handcuffs, and telling me I was under arrest. Now my wife really began to cry. As they led me away and she ran alongside, I implored her to calm down, to think of the baby, promising her that everything would turn out all right. She faded into the distance and I was shoved into an elevator, a cop holding each arm. After making me face the corner, the head honcho told that I was under arrest and that I wouldn’t be flying that day — that I was in fact a “menace.”

It’s no longer a “what if” scenario — these things are happening, all over the place, every day. Some are getting reported, many more are not. And as the author of the piece says, it’s probably too late to stop it at this point, though not too late to make our indignation known.

There are plenty of stories like this these days. I don’t know how many I’ve read where the writer describes some breach of civil liberties by employees of the state, then wraps it all up with a dire warning about what we as a nation are becoming, and how if we don’t put an end to it now, then we’re in for heaps of trouble. Well you know what? Nothing’s going to stop the inevitable. There’s no policy change that’s going to save us. There’s no election that’s going to put a halt to the onslaught of tyranny. It’s here already — this country has changed for the worse and will continue to change for the worse. There is now a division between the citizenry and the state. When that state is used as a tool against me, there is no longer any reason why I should owe any allegiance to that state.

Lott said he would survive any challenge to his post as majority leader, and Tuesday he picked up the support of a few GOP senators, including Alaska’s Ted Stevens, who vowed to “defend my friend.” Others who have voiced support for Lott include Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Michael DeWine of Ohio.

The comments from Stevens, the second-most senior Republican senator, were one of the strongest endorsements of Lott since he set off a political firestorm when he praised Thurmond’s unsuccessful presidential bid at a birthday party December 5. Praise of that campaign drew condemnation — from President Bush and others — because Thurmond ran on a segregationist platform.

Stevens said he believes Lott meant the comments as praise for Thurmond as a military man and longtime Senate colleague — not praise for his past segregationist ways. He said Lott’s comments have been blown “out of proportion.”

From CNN.com, “Lott vows to fight for leadership job”

Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing Sen. Stevens’ turn the Senatorial spot over to someone else — though that’s not likely to happen until he dies. Ah, well.

Drug company Eli Lilly is the maker of the drug Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that used to be a common ingredient in childhood vaccines. There is now substantial evidence that due to the mercury content, Thimerosal may be the cause of autism in many, many children, and Eli Lilly has been facing a number of lawsuits from parents looking for some help in caring for their children that were affected by the drug from this company.

Unfortunately, at the last minute, a provision was inserted into the Homeland Security Act that protects Eli Lilly from these lawsuits, moving the suits from state courts to a federal ‘vaccine court’ where damages are capped at $250,000.

And apparently, nobody knows how this piece of legislation got into the bill.

Now there is a $10,000 reward being offered for anyone who can identify who inserted this provision into the Homeland Security Act.

Lots more information on the issue can be found on TomPaine.com’s links to articles, with Counterspin digging into the background a bit.

(Thanks to Tom Tomorrow for the heads-up.)

Now that Al Gore has decided to step out of the ring for the next presidential race, the field looks pretty wide open. A few months ago, or even now, there wouldn’t be much chance of ousting Dubya from office, but who knows where things might stand in a couple years. In the meantime, I don’t really know much about any of the other potential Democratic candidates, so it was nice to see a quick rundown on the current possibilities over on BackupBrain last Sunday. Definitely gives me an idea of who to keep an eye on.

Lieberman: He’ll definitely run. …but there’s not a chance in hell that he could win against Bush in the general. Deplorably, there are too many people in this country that still will not vote for a Jew for president.

Kerry: He’s already running. …my issue with Kerry is part of the problem that Gore has: he’s so cautious, you think that everything coming out of his mouth has been pre-digested, run by a focus group, and vetted six ways from Sunday.

Edwards: Not this time, John. He’s smart, attractive, and he’s from the South, all of which helps a winner. But he’s a first-term senator, and he’s still finding out how things work in Washington.

Gephardt: He’s run for president before. He lost. …under his fabulous leadership, last month Democrats lost the best chance to regain the House for the next decade. He’s on the wrong side of many issues for me.

Daschle: He’s been a crappy Majority Leader. Period. Last week, he let Trent Lott off the hook for his racist comments, for pity’s sake. He can’t see a friggin’ red-meat issue when it slaps him in the face.

Howard Dean: (who?) This guy is already running. …at the moment, he’s the candidate with the best lineup on the issues. He’s a doctor, has, by all accounts, been a pretty good governor, and is fiscally conservative and socially liberal. That works for me. …I like this quote: “I have no patience with ideologues. I think they’re fundamentally disturbed.”

Biden, Feingold, Dodd, Wesley Clark: Puh-leeze.