Supreme Court Hears Arguments Over Blackbeard’s Pirate Wreck

Daily Caller – by Kevin Daley

The Supreme Court seemed to think that North Carolina unlawfully pirated copyrighted images of an 18th century shipwreck during oral arguments Tuesday morning.

The case, arising from the discovery of Blackbeard’s famed pirate ship, asks whether an underwater production company can sue North Carolina for distributing its copyrighted images of the wreck. Several justices appeared troubled by the possible consequences. 

“What the state decides to do with its own website, charging $5 or something, is to run Rocky, Marvel, whatever, Spider-Man, and perhaps Groundhog Day,” Breyer said to North Carolina lawyer Ryan Park. “Several billion dollars flows into the treasury. Now, if you win, why won’t that happen?”

The pirate Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, seized a French vessel near the Lesser Antilles in 1717 and rechristened it Queen Anne’s Revenge. Refitted with 40 guns, Queen Anne’s Revenge was the flagship of Blackbeard’s armada until it ran aground near Beaufort, North Carolina in 1718. A private salvage company located the wreck over two centuries later in 1996.

The firm retained Nautilus Productions to document their recovery activities. Nautilus and its owner, Frederick Allen, copyrighted video and still images of the ship. Thereafter, the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources displayed several copyrighted images of the wreck on its website, prompting the lawsuit now before the high court.

“After Nautilus spent nearly two decades creating works by photographing and filming (at considerable risk) underwater excavation of Blackbeard’s famed Queen Anne’s Revenge, the state brazenly pirated them,” the company wrote in its petition to the justices.

North Carolina says those claims should be dismissed, since the 11th Amendment broadly immunizes states from lawsuits. Allen counters that Congress authorized copyright infringement lawsuits against states when it adopted the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act (CRCA) in 1990. The legal question before the court is whether Congress properly did away with (or “abrogated”) state sovereign immunity from copyright claims.

The Supreme Court greatly limited congressional power to abrogate state immunity beginning with a 1996 case called Seminole Tribe v. Florida. The justices trimmed that position slightly in 2006, saying Congress can abrogate state immunity in bankruptcy cases, since that area has unique features.

Allen urged the court to follow a similar course in his case, citing a constitutional provision directing Congress “to promote the progress of science and useful arts” with patents and copyrights. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found for the state.

“The intellectual property clause, is unique within [the Constitution] in laying down an express constitutional mandate for Congress to protect specified private property rights against any and all intrusion,” Allen lawyer Derek Shaffer told the justices.

North Carolina counters that the court has already said Congress can’t use the intellectual property clause to limit state immunity. But that argument didn’t seem to hold water with the justices.

“There’s something unseemly about a state saying, yes, we can hold copyrights and we can hold infringers to account to us, but we can infringe to our heart’s content and be immune from any compensatory damages,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said.

A coalition of 31 states led by West Virginia is supporting North Carolina. They warned a ruling for Allen could open the door to more aggressive cancellations of state immunity.

“Congress might try to use the commerce clause as a future basis for abrogation,” the coalition’s brief reads. “And allowing abrogation on that theory could effectively eviscerate states’ sovereignty and pose a grave threat to our federal form of government.”

A decision in the case, Allen v. Cooper No. 18-877, is expected by June 2020.

Daily Caller

13 thoughts on “Supreme Court Hears Arguments Over Blackbeard’s Pirate Wreck

  1. I love pirates.

    Ever since I was a little boy……

    That and gettin the sht wipped out of me by my dad.

    It made a real man out of me.

    The fkng kindergarten teacher…..thought I was funny even then.

    I have my first report card to prove it.

    Especially why I lied and told my baby sitter I fell in a mud puddle.

    When in actuality…… I peed my pants on the way home frome school.

    I was so young and stupid ….

    I didn’t even know how to take a piss on the side of the road.

    Well I’ve learned a few things about pirates.

    There’s the real ones….. Ya know like BlackBeard…. Columbus etc….

    Then there’s the….

    Butt pirates…

    AKA Turd Burglars.

    The only advice I can give if you have the misfortune of stumbling unaware into one of their pirate establishments.

    Is

    1.) Keep your mouth shut.
    and
    2.) If you can’t park your car out front….
    Never….

    Park in the rear.
    or
    Rear parking available.

    Definately a pirate red flag.

    1. I hear ya.

      In kindergarten, because I was talkin’ when I wasn’t supposed to, Mother Superior paddled me hard in the butt, and for two days I was made to stand in the corner in a waste-paper basket. Guess she thought I was trash.

      .

      1. No…. she thought you’d make a good Nun.

        Don’t trigger me…. on my Roman Catholic upbringing…

        I still remember my first baptism….

        I was a little late.

        Must have been second grade or so.

        But when I was putting my head down in the bird bath…. for the holy water.

        To have the holy water poured over the back of my head face down.

        The priest pushed my face in the fking water and for a little bit longer than their supposed to.

        Kind of like….. when that holy water gets into your lungs… and you kind of start to choke…

        Yeah….that was the good old days ……

        But I can say one good thing about my Catholic upbringing.

        I never got kid fked by the priests.

        It was Visitation catholic school…. tacoma washington. You can probably google it.

        Yeah ….. quite the steeple….

        I called it our of lady of pain.

        I still have nightmare thoughts about that nun that had the mustache.

        1. so funny yet so sad

          priests were perhaps the originators of the waterboarding technique

          I like to say I was raised catlick but I escaped

  2. “originators of waterboarding” — Ha!! Excellent, Mary.

    I escaped, too. There just might be more Recovering Catholics out there than there are actual Catholics.

    .

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