Page:Veeck v Southern Building Code Congress Intl.pdf/40

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II.ANALYSIS

A. Standard of Review

This case is on appeal from a grant of a summary judgment that dismissed Veeck's declaratory judgment action and granted SBCCI's requested copyright infringement and damages relief. We review the record de novo, applying the same standard as the district court.2[1]

B. Merits

1. Overview

Despite the efforts of Veeck (and of those amici who support him and of the en banc majority opinion) to paint this case as a broad one with dire constitutional implications, the question before us is truly quite narrow. In fact, it is the majority opinion that creates drastic constitutional alterations by ruling in Veeck's favor, thereby improvidently decreeing an absolute and inflexible rule, ill-suited for modern realities. Conversely, had we held for SBCCI, we would have remained well within the precedential and persuasive boundaries of established copyright law. My analysis is necessarily delimited by the particular,undisputed facts of the case: Veeck is a non-commercial, non-educational, non-contractor, non-official, non-resident of either Anna or Savoy, who purchased a copyrighted work, replete with warnings about infringement, and published that work virtually in its entirety on the internet. Veeck published on his website the


  1. Morris v. Covan World Wide Moving, Inc., 144 F.3d 377, 380 (5th Cir. 1998). 40

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