Re: copyright under stress

On 5/26/2000, John Lederer <johnl[_at_]ibm.net> wrote:
>
> My own view of copyright is not that it is per se antiquated or
> wrong, but that the movement of it in the last 30 years has been
> the opposite of what technological change should have led to.

Viewed from my viewpoint in the academic digital library world the change is not all attributable to technology, although technology is a facilitator. One of the problems that I see is that we have a single copyright regime but a great variety in our needs for copy protection. For example, a work in the area of high energy physics can be placed on the open-access physics pre-print server on the Internet without endangering the livelihood of the author, who is merely reporting on the results of research for which he is paid. It is expected that others will quote from the work and will use it to inform their own work.

Now compare that to a blockbuster film or sound recording. There is money to be made from the intellectual property (academic authors are often not paid and sometimes have to pay to be published). Big money. The intellectual property is the source of income for those who produce these works.

Is it appropriate for these two kinds of works to have the same legal protection?

The grey area between these two situations is large. The database protection debate falls into it, as do bootlegged sound recordings. I don't know where we draw the line, but we must face the reality that when we talk about copyrighted works we are not discussing a heterogeneous mass with equal economic implications. I feel that the desire to protect "blockbuster" works has been driving copyright law much more than technology has.

Karen Coyle                    karen.coyle[_at_]ucop.edu
  University of California Digital Library
  http://www.kcoyle.net        510/987-0567
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