Allright #LawFedi#Copyright nerds: your challenge, today: when, exactly, does a copyright expiration go into effect? Curveball: Puerto Rico is an hour ahead of DC. Relevance: this is not entirely hypothetical and I guarantee anyone nerdy enough to figure this out on a Saturday will be tickled when I DM you why.
(I have looked at CRS but not yet dived into caselaw.)
@downey@luis_in_brief@marklemley@richardfontana Hmmm. The word problem was "American" but I think it has to be infringing under US law. So we have to think about extraterritorial application of US copyright law
@luis_in_brief@richardfontana@pchestek
15 usc 262:
"In all statutes, orders, rules, and regulations ... relating to the time within which any rights shall accrue or determine, or within which any act shall or shall not be performed by any person subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, it shall be understood and intended that the time shall ... be the United States standard time of the zone within which the act is to be performed."
@luis_in_brief@marklemley@richardfontana I would go with the time zone of the situs of the infringing act. If I draw Steamboat Willie at 11:59 it's infringing, at 12:01 it's a non-infringing reproduction
@pchestek@marklemley@richardfontana I knew I could count on you for a plausible theory. Of course, if the infringing act takes place on a web server… does that mean it infringes until midnight in the copyright holder’s jurisdiction?
@luis_in_brief@marklemley@richardfontana What's the infringing act? Reproduction, distribution, creating a derivative work, displaying, performing? It an act that happens somewhere. The act of uploading a copy to the server is reproduction, so that happens when I upload it. The act of display happens when someone views it somewhere (and we can also discuss whether the act of viewing a webpage is an infringement of the display right or reproduction right)
@pchestek@marklemley@richardfontana If for purposes of public domain party for nerds, I suspect it is more of a conceptual question of “when is it no longer possible for any American to infringe”, but perhaps alternately “when is it possible for at least one American to commit an otherwise infringing act” would also qualify for party-commencing purposes.
@pchestek@marklemley@richardfontana I’m not sure this is right, but in re-reading Chapter 17 302(c) in combination with Mark’s cite: the term would arguably expire when the Copyright Office strikes midnight, after which time infringement cannot occur?
@pchestek@marklemley@richardfontana I think (but it has been a long day) that my intuition is that there is a singular term, not multiple terms; hence it must expire at a single time and not 24 separate times in 24 separate time zones.
@marklemley@richardfontana@pchestek YO(Steamboat Willy expiration)O, so I asked Bard, and have had my first “the LLM made up a case” experience, in which I was told that “United States v. One 1965 Buick Riviera Gran Sport” was relevant on time zones and criminals crossing state lines.
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