Can't Touch This Copyright Law

A videographer spent more than a decade chronicling the discovery and recovery (1996) of Blackbeard's pirate ship the Queen Anne's Revenge. The State of North Carolina infringed his copyrights.

Previously, in 1990 Congress had passed the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act, which was intended to remove any State's sovereign immunity from prosecution for copyright infringement.

The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that Congress acted unconstitutionally in 1990.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-877_dc8f.pdf

Individual States have carte blache to infringe copyright. Copyright owners can't touch them.  This permitted piracy is discussed with great wit and clarity by Peter Jaffe and Marissa Yu, blogging for the lawfirm Freshfields, Bruckhaus, Deringer LLP.

Original Link.
https://digital.freshfields.com/post/102g3bc/us-supreme-court-holds-states-immune-from-copyright-suits-or-dumb-pirate-jok

Probably, other enterprises with a net worth and reach comparable to that of a sovereign State are also beyond the reach of copyright law.

Social distancing makes law enforcement, and the operation of the courts increasingly difficult, and while no one is suggesting that courts meet by hologram, as on the Planet Krypton, there is a suggestion that jurors could be sent a locked and specifically loaded iPad.

Contributor Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm writing for Holland and Knight LLP's The Persuasive Litigator blog discusses the possibility of online trials.
https://www.persuasivelitigator.com/2020/03/plan-for-online-jury-trials.html#page=1

It's an interesting idea, but is perhaps incompatible with "net neutrality", although the possibility of a juror suffering from buffering is noted, and Dr. Ken has a suggestion.

Live-streamed church services have suffered in recent weeks, and one wonders whether all traffic is truly treated equally when internet use is up up to 400%, we hear owing to so many folks being ordered to stay at home all day, day after day.

The interesting issues of network congestions are discussed by Julie Bak Larsen for the Bird and Bird legal blog.
https://www.twobirds.com/en/news/articles/2020/global/implementing-traffic-management-measures-to-tackle-network-congestion

And all the while, copyright infringement flourishes, as do internet scams, and sp-called emergency expansions of "fair use" and copyright theft as exposed by thetrichordist.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/