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That hinges on whether something which has been increased every time it should have expired is expected to continue to increase each such time. If the justices decide that Congress is doing an end run around the provision, they might well strike it down. When a judge at any level decides he's being gamed, he's likely to push back hard.
Justices are not mullahs knowing from God what the right duration is.
They are not required or expected to have divine insight into a perfect time frame; however, they are expected to have a little common sense which would say that to afford protection for a work long after the author and perhaps any offspring have died is a bit gracious with the original intent of the law to reward creativity while not unduly depriving the public access forever.
Common sense is a subject on which even jurists diagree. What is common sense to Clarence Thomas may be hidebound idiocy to Ruth B. Ginsburg, and vice-the-versa.
That hinges on whether something which has been increased every time it should have expired is expected to continue to increase each such time. If the justices decide that Congress is doing an end run around the provision, they might well strike it down. When a judge at any level decides he's being gamed, he's likely to push back hard.
That does not reflect over history what has happened. The new law would cover those already covered by the old law in the same way a driver on the road has to obey a new traffic rule and not follow the old rule. Application of new law can work both ways to advantage or disadvantage a citizen in an existing situation. You suggest a situation that is phantasm: that, for example, Congress has every decade simply extended copyrights another decade.
apart from International and Digital-Age complications, Congress has acted to significantly change the law only five times since 1790, and four involving the sort of extensions you worry about..
1790
Extensive revisions - 1831 twenty-eight years with the possibility of a fourteen-year extension irrespective of the lifetime of the author, 1870 (administrative), 1891 (International provisions), 1909 twenty eight year extension, 1976, extended protection from life of the author plus fifty years , 1988 (International provisions), 1990 (Computer software), 1992 (automatic renewal), 1996 (computer provisions), 1998 (Bono Act, extended protection from life of the author plus fifty years to life of the author plus seventy years), 1998 (computer provisions), 2007 ("fair use"), 2010-present, courts busy with sorting out digital-age complications.
Common sense is a subject on which even jurists diagree. What is common sense to Clarence Thomas may be hidebound idiocy to Ruth B. Ginsburg, and vice-the-versa.
The legislators are supposed to be possessed with common sense and jurists merely resolve conflicts of laws that may occur irrespective of common sense or any human aspect within the principle of the judiciary not making law..
CFB wrote:Justices are not mullahs knowing from God what the right duration is.
They are not required or expected to have divine insight into a perfect time frame; however, they are expected to have a little common sense which would say that to afford protection for a work long after the author and perhaps any offspring have died is a bit gracious with the original intent of the law to reward creativity while not unduly depriving the public access forever.
At any federal level of the judiciary, with no human quality at all but rather an impartial sorting of conflicting or contradictory law. English Common Law judgement is inappropriate above the state level. What we have now with "constitutional law" above the Constitution is the product of nine mullahs.
Which is a retroactive change to the contract between author and society represented by the monopoly. It's also a serious obstacle to keeping orphaned works in print. Consider a minor classic like The World of Suzie Wong. (This is a what-if example, not a real orphaned work.) If the author cannot be found, the work cannot be republished or reprinted, whatever its value. (I recall that Congress was considering laws to address this, but do not know if any were passed.)
I would say, Charles, that Common-law tools are unavoidable even at the federal level, below SCOTUS and even for SCOTUS itself, but they must always be subordinate to the written Constitution. Core doctrines such as binding precedent come to us from Common Law..
Which is a retroactive change to the contract between author and society represented by the monopoly. It's also a serious obstacle to keeping orphaned works in print. Consider a minor classic like The World of Suzie Wong. (This is a what-if example, not a real orphaned work.) If the author cannot be found, the work cannot be republished or reprinted, whatever its value. (I recall that Congress was considering laws to address this, but do not know if any were passed.)
I think you are tossing in irrelevant detail. The sole beneficiary of invention ought to be the author and tossing in a loophole to get around that is not purposeful other than for the common-good property ideologues. The principle applicable to artistic endeavor applied since 1831 has been the recognition that the author may not reap any economic benefit in his lifetime or within a significant portion of his lifetime but that his heirs ought to benefit if value begins to accrue for some period afterwards. Then it becomes a matter of details. I happen to think the Bono Act is wrong, but retroactively shaving back that extra seventy years is wrong, too, and I think you have a point if Congress upped it to a thousand years.
I would say, Charles, that Common-law tools are unavoidable even at the federal level, below SCOTUS and even for SCOTUS itself, but they must always be subordinate to the written Constitution. Core doctrines such as binding precedent come to us from Common Law..
That has been a primary tool for the Feds to get around the Constitution. It needed to have applied to international situations for a while after the Founding but not in 1898 Wong Kim Ark, for example (may be the first example), when it was asserted 14th century English Common Law (but not later explicit 17th-century law) over-rode the words in the Constitution that gave Congress sole discretion respecting citizenship. I,8,4 of the Constitution was deliberately put in to monopolize all citizenship not natural born (to U.S. citizens born to U.S. citizens on U.S. soil) to the discretion of Congress. Indeed, Justice Marshall did usurp power to SCOTUS via Marbury v. Madison on the logic of "precedent" and to this day is even a failing of "conservative" judges like Scalia but not Thomas.
Without precedent, every case must be decided from first principles and without benefif of prior experience. No judge would be bound by the precedent of higher courts, and every case would be subject to appeal because no prior legal reasoning would apply to it.
English Common Law is a remarkable achievement and a crown jewel of civiliization, and I saw no evidence in The Federalist, or anywhere else, that the Framers envisioned rebuilding the principles of the judiciary ab novo. Rather, they chose to fit it into, and subordinate to, the Constitution.
They failed to address who would hear appeals against Acts said to violate the restrictions placed by the Constitution. It seems to me that this made Marbury v. Madison, or a similar case, inevitable in a government run by men and not by (unfallen) angels.
Sigh. Did we have a topic here?
Common sense is a subject on which even jurists diagree. What is common sense to Clarence Thomas may be hidebound idiocy to Ruth B. Ginsburg, and vice-the-versa.
Common sense being that innate wisdom unhindered by specialized training and/or knowledge would be greatly undermined in the examples presented not to mention the uncommon influence of incentives provided to Congress in their ivory towers by the likes of Disney. However, a time frame on the subject at hand might be reasonably related to common sense by "averaging" the input of a broad cross-section of the public at large. Take care. Vern
Common sense does depend on your frame. If you believe in Rousseau's view of human nature, your commonsense solution to a human problem may be the exact opposite of what it would be if you took the tragic view of human nature.
Averaging 'go north' and 'go south' gets you exactly nowhere.
Common sense does depend on your frame. If you believe in Rousseau's view of human nature, your commonsense solution to a human problem may be the exact opposite of what it would be if you took the tragic view of human nature.
Averaging 'go north' and 'go south' gets you exactly nowhere.
You might be correct if we were taking Rousseau's or any individual's philosophical view per se, but a broad spectrum of views derived from the general public is just the opposite of taking one person's view of human nature. To average directions is not even relevant to averaging a concept of time for the situation being considered; it is not even as close to comparing apples to oranges which is to say utilizing a bit of "common sense" should make the difference apparent. In the case of determining a time frame for copyright, everyone would not agree on a specific number of years, but you would come up with a number likely to be considered reasonable by the majority of people using their own common sense. And using common sense wouldn't provide a number completely off the scale of reason. Take care. Vern
Our society id highly polarizef now along the Rousseaen/Tragic split. The middle very badly frayed.
Our society id highly polarizef now along the Rousseaen/Tragic split. The middle very badly frayed.
Our society is highly polarized along a Republican-Democrat line and whether one or both sides are good, bad, noble savages, or whatever, I think it quite likely that if one thousand of each selected at random were asked in an isolated room by a neutral synthesized voice to determine individually a reasonable copyright time frame, they could be "averaged" to derive a "common sense" number acceptable to both sides as they would have no idea of any party line response. Otherwise we are all on the "tragic" side of society. No, I don't think that will ever happen; the thought exercise merely indicates that a "common sense" solution is entirely possible. And we've probably needlessly run the subject into the ground. Take care. Vern
The left-right line lies over the Tragic Vision line. Thomas Sowell has made a very strong case on the point. It also tracks the Plato/Aristotle split pretty closely. These are not new issues.
Aaaaaaand, Sol's thread is effectively hijacked.
~Tom
Aaaaaaand, Sol's thread is effectively hijacked.
Yeah, that's okay. I've gotten the feedback I was looking for 
.
And it's always the same person derailing the threads!
We haven't had a mystery contest before and so I liked the Locked Room concept. I would have done the fanfiction angle but I know some writers like to submit their contest entries for publication, and that wouldn't be possible with fanfiction. So, I added two other criteria. I hope you find the contest challenging and fun.
We certainly look forward to reading them.
Sol
Aaaaaaand, Sol's thread is effectively hijacked.
~Tom
Has there ever been a thread with a large number of responses (say at least two pages) that hasn't been "hijacked" or deviated from the subject of the initial post? Even the simplest of premises such as the first word which comes to mind do not stay on course as naturally more than one word soon appears in responses. I wouldn't consider that being "hijacked". Like most natural conversations and soap operas, offshoots occur within threads with regularity much like objects falling under the influence of gravity when dropped. Take care. Vern
Without precedent, every case must be decided from first principles
Yes.
As Steve Martin would say: Well, excuuuuuse me! I am a member of many forums and pretty much every one of them has strict rules about diversions from the main point of the OP (Original Post). Some of my comments as well as others have been either deleted or the whole thread locked from further comment when it went off the tracks. My railroad simulator (Trainz) forum is regularly policed and entire threads have been deleted for what I considered a minor infraction. The Ubuntu forum is the same way.
It is refreshing to note that this won't occur in this forum, because I happen to believe the same as you, Dill and you, Vern. A forum is precisely the place to diverge in a logical manner, otherwise, why call it a "forum"?
~Tom
First entry in the contest appears to be the first chapter of someone's novel, unrelated to the contest. Someone is implementing a sound marketing strategy. 
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