Media Contact: Free Software Foundation
Bradley M. Kuhn <pr@fsf.org>
Phone:+1-617-542-5942
In our brief, Eben Moglen, FSF Board Member and General Counsel, wrote: "The constitutional importance of the 'limited Times' restriction cannot be vitiated ... by affording Congress the opportunity to create perpetuities on the installment plan, any more than Congress can eliminate the constitutional requirement of originality". He continues: "To turn the system of free expression into a series of private fiefdoms for the benefit of monopolists ... is forbidden to Congress by the plain wording of the Copyright Clause and by the First Amendment".
While nearly all of the Free Software code base at the core of the popular GNU/Linux operating system is copyrighted--much of it protected by FSF's GNU General Public License (GPL)--FSF promotes a healthy and vibrant public domain. Copyright is a government-granted, limited time, monopolistic control that has run amok. FSF filed this amicus brief to stand with those who fight for the public's freedom to build on the intellectual works of the past.
The full brief is available at http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/eldred-amicus.html.
The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software--particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants--and free documentation for free software. FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software. Their web site, located at http://www.gnu.org, is an important source of information about GNU/Linux. They are headquartered in Boston, MA, USA.
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Updated: $Date: 2002/05/21 17:55:21 $ $Author: bkuhn $