Re: copyright under stress

On 06/08/2000, Eric Eldred <eldred[_at_]eldritchpress.org> wrote:
>
> Think what would happen if Congress passed a law to allow a certain
> church to copyright all texts and translations of the Bible. How
> could setting up such a monopoly be justified under copyright law?

Interestingly enough, Congress tried to do exactly that with Mary Baker Eddy's "Science and Health," the basic text of the Christian Science religion. The Church was concerned that various "polluted" versions of the text were being disseminated by splinter groups, so it got Congress to pass a law reviving and extending Eddy's copyright for 75 years and assigning it solely to the trustees of the Church. And, yes, the law was held invalid as a violation of the Establishment clause of the First Amendment. [The alternative argument, that the law violated the "limited times" provision of the Copyright Clause, was unfortunately never ruled upon; the ruling that the law was invalid made such a ruling unnecessary.]

Tyler T. Ochoa
Associate Professor
Whittier Law School
<tochoa[_at_]law.whittier.edu> Received on Mon Jun 12 2000 - 21:39:07 GMT