Re: copyright under stress

On Mon, Jun 12, 2000, Robert Cumbow <rcumbow[_at_]grahamdunn.com> wrote:
>
> I'd be interested in seeing concrete examples of situations in
> which copyright causes denial of access.

I haven't been following this thread, so I apologize if I'm repeating what others have said. I did write a law review article on "Accessibility and Commercialization in Copyright Theory," so have some views on the subject.

Diaries, memos to your boss, and lab notebooks with your notes about your experiment, all represent copyrighted works which you may wish to deny others access to. Nothing in copyright law compels you to give access.

But I should note that it is your possession of the original material rather than copyright law that allows you to prevent the access. You have it. They can't get it. Copyright law doesn't compel you to give access if you don't want to.

Howard Hughes tried to buy up copyrighted materials about himself to prevent others from using it. The Rosemont Enterprises v. Random House case involved that issue. Authors such as Salinger have tried to prevent copying and quoting from their letters. Salinger v. Random House.

Computer programs are disseminated on disks in object code. We don't get to read the original source code -- no access required there. Books in French are equally inaccessible to those of us who don't read French.

In my article, I argued that when works are commercialized, then fair use ought to allow greater uses of those works than for uncommercialized works, but that is a different argument from arguing that copyrighted works should be accessible as a matter of copyright law.

      Regards,
            Bob Kreiss
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* Robert A. Kreiss                          Ph. 937-229-2256 
* Professor of Law and                                       
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