Re: benefits of the public domain and limited copyright terms?

Dear Friends:

One fact often overlooked in these discussions is that the vast majority of published works never see a second print run. When the older copyright code was in effect, very few were renewed. Most carry very little commercial value to begin with and hardly any in future years. Perpetual copyright only benefits the holders of rights to the very few works of great popularity.

What happens with the rest of the material? Practically speaking, it is the scholars and those who love these works for their contribution to human knowledge and wisdom who will care enough to preserve them. There are precious few of these and each year materials go crumble away without care. Even libraries, with a direct interest in preserving materials for the future and with the right to save them cannot keep up with the need to copy the vast store going literally into the dust. Yet at least the public domain and the foresight of congress has made it legal to do so.

For those materials that have enduring scholarly value beyond narrow specialties, but with little commercial value, digital library projects preserve the resources and make the available to a world-wide audience. You may have noticed that most of these trade in public domain materials. Why? Because finding rights holders for unprofitable works is very difficult.

How difficult? I have a work called: "Walther and the Church." It's author, a nineteenth century Lutheran theologian is not well know outside this Christian tradition. He wrote the works in this anthology in German. Naturally, the originals are in the public domain. The problem, the church body he founded now speaks in English. Very few of its members can read German. Enter a translation done in the 1930s. Two translators, Dau and Dallmann, both at the end of very productive careers, put the work together. Our publishing house did one run and returned the work's rights to the translators. We're not even sure if the work was renewed. To get permission to put the work on the web, where many would benefit from Walther's wisdom, amounts to an exercise in reverse genealogy. We would have to find every one of both translators heirs, now in the fourth and fifth generations to gain permission. Result: the work will not be done. We will wait the decades it might take to find a translator to do the work anew.

The Public Domain protects the right of a society to build on its treasures. It must remain, even if in its currently barely existing form. Without it, we might as well turn our libraries over to the fate of the greatest one of them all -- the Alexandrian Library.

Rev. Robert E. Smith
Electronic Resources Librarian
Concordia Theological Seminary
Fort Wayne, Indiana
<smithre[_at_]mail.ctsfw.edu> Received on Wed May 17 2000 - 13:54:20 GMT