Supreme Court: There's No 'Time Limit' on Copyright Infringement Claims

https://torrentfreak.com/supreme-court-theres-no-time-limit-on-copyright-infringement-claims-240510/

by Rant423 • 2 years ago

54 29 2 years ago

No time limit for copyright claims but very strict limits for anything to do with labour rights - and they still keep telling us it's a country of laws.

gecko• 2 years ago

I mean, it is a country of laws. Just...some of those laws are pretty bad. For what it's worth, the Court in this case is narrowly focused on correcting a lower court's interpretation of the Copyright Act, not something in the Constitution or something fundamental, and on a first glance, I at least feel that their conclusion is highly justifiable. That doesn't mean the Copyright Act isn't fundamentally broken (it is, on my opinion), but that's trivially fixable by Congress if we get appropriately minded representatives.

HarryHirsch2• 2 years ago

The doctrine of adverse possession is well-established, at some point there has to be certainty about who owns what. Look at East Germany after reunification if you don't believe, the fights over real estate seriously delayed rebuilding.

But for copyright adverse possession doesn't apply - it's understandable why the music industry would have the Court say so.

stevenwoo• 2 years ago

Minority rule by design (or originalists), a perspective: https://www.npr.org/2024/04/22/1246297603/ari-berman-minorit...

teeray• 2 years ago

It would be nice to have some mechanism to force the various branches of government to pass laws that oppose their own collective self-interests but advance the interests of the populace.

AnarchismIsCool• 2 years ago

There...is... It's even in the bill of rights, it's just not very pleasant.

AndrewDucker• 2 years ago

Sure. Get a majority of people and a majority of states to vote for it. That's the mechanism.

westurner6• 2 years ago

Why is Copyright, of all things, exempt from the federal statute of limitations?

Are federal CSA cases exempted from the federal statute of limitations then?

For CSA cases, e.g. California has: two (2) years from when the victim remembers IIUC?

westurner6• 2 years ago

Are Conflict of Interest cases against the court exempted from the Statute of Limitations?

Can commuted and pardoned cases be reheard once the elected executive is out of office, if there no limit to the statute of limitations?

(Ludicrous that the court would consider total immunity for an executive of one branch, by the way.)

ceejayoz3• 2 years ago

They didn’t even have an ethics code until last year. The new one isn’t great , either. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/new-...

The rules themselves are weak. Consider recusal, when justices step aside from considering a case. The justices took the rule that applies to lower court judges but then inserted a handful of new loopholes, including one that could be so big that it swallows the rule — basically allowing a justice to disregard a required recusal if they think their vote is needed in the case. And the financial disclosure rules haven’t tightened at all — a significant shortcoming, since the justices have proven themselves troublingly adept at sidestepping the current rules, whether for RVs, tuition, fishing trips, or real estate deals.

cdot2• 2 years ago

Can commuted and pardoned cases be reheard once the elected executive is out of office, if there no limit to the statute of limitations?

That would be a double-jeopardy issue.

mminer237• 2 years ago

Isn't the ruling because there is no overarching federal statute of limitations?

ameister143• 2 years ago

It isn't exempt from anything; the majority opinion says "The Act’s statute of limitations establishes a three year period for filing suit, which begins to run when a claim accrues."

The question is when the claim accrues. As in your example of CSA cases, they decided it's from when the victim discovers the crime and not when the crime occurred.

ameister143• 2 years ago

The title is not accurate.

The Court clarified that the time limit is 3 years from discovering the infringement, not 3 years from when the infringement took place.

Aloha2• 2 years ago

I dont get why people elsewhere on this thread are so up in arms about it - it seems like a perfectly reasonable interpretation of federal law, consistent with other kinds of civil claims.

Tying the ability to recover damages not to the date of the action that caused the loss, but rather to when you discovered the loss seems more reasonable.

ameister143• 2 years ago

The problem I can see is the extension of the period of damages. There is an argument to be made that there should probably be a statutory cap on years for damages accrual rather than just 'as long as you infringed,' but that's for the legislature to do.

snapplebobapple• 2 years ago

In general, tying statute of limitations to discovery rather than date of occurence is a bad idea because it extends liability infinitely and rewards incompetence on the victim side, which is egregious in general, but especially egregious in civil matters.

gjsman-1000• 2 years ago

Unfortunately, this is probably the correct decision. It's not the SCOTUS's job to determine what a "good" law versus a "bad" law is, unless it directly violates the constitution - which, when the constitution specifically says copyright is acceptable, and says nothing about a requirement for any statute of limitations, this clearly isn't.

xtracto• 2 years ago

People tend to mistake what the job of the Supreme Courts is. It is not as some form of vindictive righteousness body.

Supreme courts are there to uphold the definite letter of the law. If laws are bad/outdated or otherwise improper, it's up to the other branches of government to change them.

nico• 2 years ago

Supreme Court: There's No 'Time Limit' on Copyright Infringement Claims

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