Re: thought for the week

On Tue, 3 Aug 1999, Lance Purple <lpurple[_at_]netcom.com> wrote:
>
> Who said anything about forcing the publisher to reprint the work?
> I want the law to declare that it's fair use for me to make and
> give away copies of published copyrighted works which have been
> out-of-print for forty years. IMHO, it already meets three of
> the four tests (nonprofit educational use; published work which
> was sold to the general public; no effect on sales since no new
> copies have been sold in decades) and possibly even the fourth,
> (since I need to copy the whole work to allow others to read it).
> BUT, I don't have the financial resources to test my hypothesis
> in Federal court.

I think "no effect on sales" is more than a little strong. Illustrative anecdote: _The Hornblower Companion_ had been out of print for years -- exactly how many, I don't know, but I think it was about ten years ago that I first tried to find it. (In fact, it seems that Forrester's whole Hornblower series goes in- and out-of-print irregularly.) The "Arts and Entertainment" (A&E) cable channel recently produced four TV movies based on _Mr. Midshipman Hornblower_. That production generated sufficient interest that _The Hornblower Companion_ was finally reprinted. If I (and presumably many others) had obtained a "fair use" copy earlier, there certainly _would_ have been an effect on sales.

• Patrick O'Donnell pao[_at_]alum.mit.edu