Article on Protection of History

I am in the research stage on an article addressing how the protections of works involving history under American Copyright law has not kept up with current understanding of history. My thesis is that American Copyright law continues to perceive history as an objective constant, and, thus, to prevent any one person from owning history, copyright law affords works founded on historical events very little protection.

It is my understanding that the current philosophy of the teaching and understanding of history has a much stronger subjective component (probably a better work than deconstructionism). In particular, history is currently colored by the understanding that it involves the collection and categorization of particular facts from the myriad of facts in a manner that supports the authors views.

My position is that the acceptance of a broad subjective component to history has demonstrated that there are a myriad of ways to tell the story of any historical event. Applying this position to copyright laws should translate into broader protections for works founded on historical events by underscoring the expression of creativity that goes into a work founded on history and challenging the premise that any broader protections to history would take events out of the public discourse.

My question -- while probably not the most appropriate for this forum -- is whether anyone knows of any good references discussing the current philosophy of history?

John Shaeffer
Shaeffer[_at_]oslaw.com Received on Mon Apr 13 1998 - 16:44:12 GMT