Re: copyright under stress

On 06/12/2000, Tyler T. Ochoa <tochoa[_at_]law.whittier.edu> wrote:
>
> 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.]

What a fascinating story about Mary Baker Eddy. Couldn't a separation of powers argument be used there as well? Is there a ready source of the details of this case?

Ran Pyle
UCF
<pyle[_at_]mail.ucf.edu> Received on Tue Jun 13 2000 - 23:15:08 GMT