{"id":3405,"date":"2020-09-21T16:47:26","date_gmt":"2020-09-21T16:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/?p=3405"},"modified":"2020-09-21T16:47:29","modified_gmt":"2020-09-21T16:47:29","slug":"fourteenth-amendment-copyright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/2020\/09\/fourteenth-amendment-copyright.html","title":{"rendered":"When does the Fourteenth Amendment care about copyright infringement?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/58BaDrSQknY?controls=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">In 1717, the pirate Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, captured a French slave ship in the West Indies and renamed her Queen Anne\u2019s Revenge. The vessel became his flagship. Carrying some 40 cannons and 300 men, the Revenge took many prizes as she sailed around the Caribbean and up the North American coast.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><!--more--><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">But her reign over those seas was short-lived. In 1718, the ship ran aground on a sandbar a mile off Beaufort, North Carolina. Blackbeard and most of his crew escaped without harm. Not so the Revenge. She sank beneath the waters, where she lay undisturbed for nearly 300 years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">In 1996, a marine salvage company named Intersal, Inc., discovered the shipwreck. Under federal and state law, the wreck belongs to North Carolina. But the State contracted with Intersal to take charge of the recovery activities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Intersal in turn retained petitioner Frederick Allen, a local videographer, to document the operation. For over a decade, Allen created videos and photos of divers\u2019 efforts to salvage the Revenge\u2019s guns, anchors, and other remains. He registered copyrights in all those works.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The suit arisen from North Carolina\u2019s publication of some of Allen\u2019s videos and photos. Allen first protested in 2013 that the State was infringing his copyrights by uploading his work to its website without permission. To address that allegation, North Carolina agreed to a settlement paying Allen $15,000 and laying out the parties\u2019 respective rights to the materials.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">But Allen and the State soon found themselves embroiled in another dispute. Allen complained that North Carolina had impermissibly posted five of his videos online and used one of his photos in a newsletter. When the State declined to admit wrongdoing, Allen filed this action in Federal District Court. It charges the State with copyright infringement (call it a modern form of piracy) and seeks money damages.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">North Carolina moved to dismiss the suit on the ground of sovereign immunity. It invoked the general rule that federal courts cannot hear suits brought by individuals against nonconsenting States. But Allen responded that an exception to the rule applied because Congress had abrogated the States\u2019 sovereign immunity from suits like his.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The Copyright Remedy Clarification Act of 1990 (CRCA or Act) provides that a State \u201cshall not be immune, under the Eleventh Amendment or any other doctrine of sovereign immunity, from suit in Federal court\u201d for copyright infringement. And the Act specifies that in such a suit a State will be liable, and subject to remedies, \u201cin the same manner and to the same extent as\u201d a private party.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">That meant, Allen contended, that his suit against North Carolina could go forward. The District Court agreed. Quoting the CRCA\u2019s text, the court first found that \u201cCongress has stated clearly its intent to abrogate sovereign immunity for copyright claims against a state.\u201d And that abrogation, the court next held, had a proper constitutional basis.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">On interlocutory appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed. Because the appeal held a federal statute invalid, the Supreme Court granted certiorari.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>Supreme Court\u2019s analysis<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">No one disputed that Congress used clear enough language to abrogate the States\u2019 immunity from copyright infringement suits. The CRCA provides that States \u201cshall not be immune\u201d from those actions in federal court. And the Act specifies that a State stands in the identical position as a private defendant \u2013 exposed to liability and remedies \u201cin the same manner and to the same extent.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The contested question is whether Congress had authority to take that step. Allen argued that it did, under either of two constitutional provisions. He first pointed to the clause in Article I empowering Congress to provide copyright protection. If that fails, he invoked Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which authorizes Congress to \u201cenforce\u201d the commands of the Due Process Clause.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">In Allen\u2019s view, Congress\u2019s authority to abrogate sovereign immunity from copyright suits naturally follows. Abrogation is the single best way for Congress to \u201csecure\u201d a copyright holder\u2019s \u201cexclusive Rights\u201d as against a State\u2019s intrusion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">For an abrogation statute to be \u201cappropriate\u201d under Section 5, it must be tailored to \u201cremedy or prevent\u201d conduct infringing the Fourteenth Amendment\u2019s substantive prohibitions. Congress can permit suits against States for actual violations of the rights guaranteed in Section 1.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">And to deter those violations, it can allow suits against States for \u201ca somewhat broader swath of conduct,\u201d including acts constitutional in themselves. But Congress cannot use its \u201cpower to enforce\u201d the Fourteenth Amendment to alter what that Amendment bars. That means a congressional abrogation is valid under Section 5 only if it sufficiently connects to conduct courts have held Section 1 to proscribe.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">For Congress\u2019s action to fall within its Section 5 authority \u201cthere must be a congruence and proportionality between the injury to be prevented or remedied and the means adopted to that end.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">On the one hand, courts are to consider the constitutional problem Congress faced \u2013 both the nature and the extent of state conduct violating the Fourteenth Amendment. That assessment usually (though not inevitably) focuses on the legislative record, which shows the evidence Congress had before it of a constitutional wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">On the other hand, courts are to examine the scope of the response Congress chose to address that injury. Here, a critical question is how far, and for what reasons, Congress has gone beyond redressing actual constitutional violations.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">An infringement must be intentional, or at least reckless, to come within the reach of the Due Process Clause. A State cannot violate that Clause unless it fails to offer an adequate remedy for an infringement, because such a remedy itself satisfies the demand of \u201cdue process.\u201d That means within the broader world of state copyright infringement is a smaller one where the Due Process Clause comes into play.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Under Florida Prepaid, the CRCA must fail court\u2019s \u201ccongruence and proportionality\u201d test. The evidence of Fourteenth Amendment injury supporting the CRCA and the Patent Remedy Act is equivalent \u2013 for both, that is, exceedingly slight. And the scope of the two statutes is identical \u2013 extending to every infringement case against a State.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">It follows that the balance the laws strike between constitutional wrong and statutory remedy is correspondingly askew. In this case, as in Florida Prepaid, the law\u2019s \u201cindiscriminate scope\u201d is \u201cout of proportion\u201d to any due process problem.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">In this case the statute aims to \u201cprovide a uniform remedy\u201d for statutory infringement, rather than to redress or prevent unconstitutional conduct. And so in this case the law is invalid under Section 5.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Article I\u2019s Intellectual Property Clause could not provide the basis for an abrogation of sovereign immunity. And the court <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/docs\/Allen-v-Cooper-SCOTUS-18-877_dc8f.pdf\">held<\/a> that Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment could not support an abrogation on a legislative record.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On the one hand, courts are to consider the constitutional problem Congress faced \u2013 both the nature and the extent of state conduct violating the Fourteenth Amendment. That assessment usually (though not inevitably) focuses on the legislative record, which shows the evidence Congress had before it of a constitutional wrong.<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/2020\/09\/fourteenth-amendment-copyright.html\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">When does the Fourteenth Amendment care about copyright infringement?<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,5,6,18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interpretation","category-copyright","category-intellectual-property","category-law","category-litigation","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3405"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3407,"href":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3405\/revisions\/3407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dekuzu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}