Another salvo in the Copyright Wars

Found via www.librarian.net and the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education:

In Kahle v. Ashcroft, the Internet Archive and the Preminger Archive of old film and television materials seek to overturn the retroactive application of automatic or "unconditional" copyrighted status to certain "orphan" works published between 1964 and 1978. I'm not sure that I understand their argument. It seems to be more complex than Eldred v. Ashcroft, and it may be beyond my puny reasoning capabilities. It looks to me like a case involving a fairly narrow set of copyrighted works, but Lawrence Lessig seems to think otherwise. He's discussed this on his blog, and suggests that "If the case were to prevail, Congress would have to reenact the Sonny Bono Act to protect non-orphaned works...."

.PDF of complaint is available here .