Library Rights Are at Stake in New Supreme Court Copyright Case - Wired Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education

"Does Congress have the right to restore copyright protection to foreign works that have fallen into the public domain? That issue is at the heart of a major copyright case that the Supreme Court agreed to hear yesterday. Its resolution could have implications for libraries’ ability to share works online, advocates say. In dispute are decades-old foreign works that slipped into the public domain in the United States while still copyrighted abroad. Congress in 1994 adopted a bill to place those works back under the shield of copyright protection, in an effort to align U.S. policy with an international copyright treaty called the Berne Convention. The aim of that convention was to ensure that works copyrighted in one country get comparable protection elsewhere, “since there is no such thing as international copyright,” according to SCOTUSblog, which tracks the Supreme Court. But the Internet Archive argues that the American law poses “a significant threat to the ability of libraries and archives to promote access to knowledge,” according to a brief filed on its behalf by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that advocates for civil liberties online...."