Re: copyright expiration as a spur to creativity

From: Hilary Cantwell <hilary[_at_]deakin.edu.au>
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 09:42:46 +1000

On 7/28/98, John Allison <allisonj[_at_]mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
>
> On 7/27/98, Bob Cumbow <cumbr[_at_]perkinscoie.com> wrote:
> >
> > I don't think such a scheme would ensure that a copy of any book
> > could "always be obtained", since allowing a book to become public
> > domain is no assurance that anyone would publish it and make it
> > available. I agree, though, that there should be some disincentive
> > for publishers to keep copyrighted works out of print. Although I
> > think a copyright owner should not lose his copyright as a result
> > of such a market-driven decision, I wonder about an alternative
> > scheme: If a copyright owner decides to take a previously-published
> > work out of print, he does not lose his copyright, but he does lose
> > the right to obtain damages for infringement of the work during the
> > time it is unavailable. In other words, making an unauthorized
> > copy (for personal use, not commercial distribution) of a book that
> > is out of print and otherwise unavailable would be deemed a fair
> > use. Comments, anyone?
>
> This appears to me to be a very reasonable, minimalist approach to the
> problem. What would you think about a compulsory license-reasonable
> royalty scheme? This obviously is not a minimalist approach, and
> significant transaction costs could result from the reasonable royalty
> determination. It would, however, permit a less-than-huge publisher to
> put the book back into print.

We do have something like that in Australia - our Copyright Act has a statutory licence for educational instutitions. It allows multiple copying of limited amounts - for a fee. If a work is unavailable "within a reasonable time at an ordinary commercial price" then you can copy the whole work. A "reasonable time" is defined elsewhere (6 months for music and textbooks, 30 days for other stuff). It works well for us because out-of-print material can still be used, the copyright owner gets a payment (from the statutory licence fee) and, I guess if the work is reprinted, then we would have to go back to purchasing the real thing.

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Hilary Cantwell

Deakin University
Geelong, Australia

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<hilary[_at_]deakin.edu.au> Received on Wed Jul 29 1998 - 23:48:09 GMT