University of Denver music professor Lawrence Golan’s decade-long battle against a new federal copyright law ended bitterly Wednesday when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against him.
Golan, in 2001, sued to overturn a law that yanked certain foreign works of music, art, film and literature out of the public domain and placed them under copyright protection. Golan said the law violated the spirit of copyright — that works given to the public can’t be taken away.
But a 6-2 majority of the Supreme Court disagreed, finding that Congress was within its powers to grant protection to the works, which was done as part of an international treaty to ensure that American works receive similar copyright protection abroad. Some of the foreign works given copyright protection in America, the court noted, had never before received that protection here.
“Congress had reason to believe that a well-functioning international copyright system would encourage the dissemination of existing and future works,” said the majority opinion.
Golan said he was saddened by the ruling, which he said makes it too expensive for all but the biggest orchestras to perform many classic works from the mid-1900s. For instance, before the new law, Golan had been able to perform Sergei Prokofiev’s beloved “Peter and the Wolf” for free. Now, it is illegal to perform the work without paying for it.
The ruling also affects music by Igor Stravinsky and Dmitri Shostakovich, in addition to certain early Alfred Hitchcock films and some writings by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Stanford University law school’s Fair Use Project and one of Golan’s attorneys in the case, said the ruling sets an unwelcome precedent.
“It suggests Congress doesn’t have to pay particularly close attention to the public interest when making copyright laws,” Falzone said.
