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The Woman Who Established Fair Use
The Narrative Fallacy writes "The Washington Post has an interesting profile on Barbara A. Ringer, who joined the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress in 1949 and spent 21 years drafting the legislation and lobbying Congress before the Copyright Act of 1976 was finally passed. Ringer wrote most of the bill herself. 'Barbara had personal and political skills that could meld together the contentious factions that threatened to tear apart every compromise in the 20 year road to passage of the 1976 Act,' wrote copyright lawyer William Patry. The act codified the fair use defense to copyright infringement. For the first time, scholars and reviewers could quote briefly from copyrighted works without having to pay fees. With the 1976 act that Ringer conceived, an author owned the copyright for his or her lifetime plus 50 years. Previously under the old 1909 law, an author owned the copyright for 28 years from the date of publication and unless the copyright was renewed, the work entered the public domain, and the author lost any right to royalties. Ringer received the President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service, the highest honor for a federal worker. Ringer remained active in copyright law for years, attending international conferences and filing briefs with the Supreme Court before her death earlier this year at age 83. 'Her contributions were monumental,' said Marybeth Peters, the Library of Congress's current register of copyrights. 'She blazed trails. She was a heroine.'"
IANAL As a law librarian, it's always my understanding the 4 fair uses tests were already well establish by a large body of case laws. The congress merely codify them into the United State Code explicitly. Of course, the congress could had choose other directions if they wanted to, but they didn't. I haven't read the article yet. I am sure she is instrumental in the codification of the case laws into statutory language, but don't oversell it.
"fair use," a not clearly defined defense, meaning you get sued and have to prove you didn't infringe. Copyright holders got life + 50 years and no need to file.
Faust got a better deal.
My heroes are rather the big bearded one for the GNU GPL and Lawrence Lessig for Creative Commons. The mess left by this "heroine" obviously needs to be cleaned up, without a flourishing public domain innovation is doomed. Life plus 50 years, come on...
Previously under the old 1909 law, an author owned the copyright for 28 years from
the date of publication and unless the copyright was renewed,
the work entered the public domain, and the author lost any right to royalties.
That seems a hell of a lot more fair than the in perpetuity that we have now.
We really should go back to that or life of the author or 20 years which ever comes later.
The Navy Motto "IF it ain't broke Fix It" "A day is wasted if you don't learn something new"
what? people might mod down a snide strawman that contributes nothing to the discussion? Let me try!
"No, strangling a composer with a piano roll is not fair use"
wow this is fun!
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
The 1976 copyright act was what got us into the mess we're in now. It was a huge power grab by the copyright owners. It extended the copyright term, retroactively, to the insane death + 50 years nonsense. It dropped the registration requirement (perhaps the biggest stupidest idea in copyright law ever). It extended both the scope of what was copyrightable and what was considered an exclusive right. Fair use was already common law, so claiming that the 1976 law established it is bullshit. It codified it, that's all. The only thing that the 1976 copyright law did was remotely good was that it clarified that transfer of copyright required a signed document.. something that wasn't actually clear before the law. But hey, Hilter made the trains run on time too.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Heroine? Seriously? Extending copyright to 50 years past death? Giving major copyright holdiers just about everything they wanted?
She should be scorned as the woman who betrayed the American People for the sake of the greed of lazy corporations.
Can we attempt to put this into a little better perspective?
A lifetime is generally unfair to a lot of authors - if the old dude wrote his greatest work only days, months, or two or three years before croaking, he and his estate make very little.
Lifetime +50 might be a little to much, but I can live with it.
Lifetime +25 seems reasonable to me - even if the old goat's work is published the day he dies, his estate has a quarter CENTURY to make something of his work.
The problem is, WHO OWNS MOST COPYRIGHT TODAY?!?!?!
It isn't the old goat who wrote a book, a song, or a software. It's the CORPORATIONS!
And, what, precisely, is the lifetime of any given corporation? In effect, we have non-expiring copyright law today. Even if a corporation goes bankrupt, someone, somewhere BUYS their assets, becoming the new corporate owner of the copyright.
Time limits on copyright needs to be addressed all over again, bearing in mind that the vast bulk of copyrights are either created by corporations and/or their employees in the name of the corporation, OR bought by corporations.
Personally, I could justify limiting all copyright to 50 years, period.
Aside from that, fair use really needs to be defined quite clearly. Copyright law was NEVER intended to inhibit creativity and free expression. It's ONLY legitimate purpose is to prevent other people from plegiarising and/or profiting from an original work.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Not quite accurate. Songwriters often own the copyright to the song just not he recorded performance.
Cornell University Law School is your friend when you want to find out about things like this--they have the U.S. Code available online.
In particular, 17 USC 302 is edifying. Copyright in works for hire persists for 95 years from first publication, or 120 years from creation, whichever comes first. If it's not a work for hire, then it's life of the author + 70 years. Older works (first published prior to 1978) are covered under different provisions.
A lifetime is generally unfair to a lot of authors - if the old dude wrote his greatest work only days, months, or two or three years before croaking, he and his estate make very little.
You don't seem to understand why we have copyright law. The purpose of copyright isn't to enrich the creator and his heirs, it's to encourage the creator to create more. If he dies, that's over. If the heirs want to get rich on creations, let them write their own shit. And don't bother with the "pass on the family business" thing, because if a plumber wants to pass his business on to his son, he better teach him plumbing.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
You do know that life + 70 (the current term in the US, as of the 1998 Sonny Bono Act) only applies to the life of the original creator, right? It has no relevance to the lifetime of a corporation; even if the rights are transferred to a corporation, copyright still expires 70 years after the death of the original author.
For works that are created by corporations (i.e. works-for-hire), copyright lasts for 95 years after publication.
Not that I don't agree with you; copyright extension is awful, and I personally wish it were possible to revert copyright to 28+28 or even the original (1790 Copyright Act) term of 14 years + a 14 year renewal. But you should check your facts.
You make a good point, but I think you're being a little harsh. There are other assets that get passed on after death, like stocks and wealth and houses and boats. Why should copyright be any different? It's also no guarantee that the heirs will get rich--the vast majority of copyrighted works don't make much money, especially after the first few years.
I personally think that the 1909 law (28 years + renewal) was a much better length of time (though I am skeptical about the renewal), and that fair use should have simply been added to that law. If the unfortunate author would still have held copyright while living, it makes sense that his heirs would retain it until it expired, yet the strict time limit would keep pressure on a still-living author to create more works.
Your brain is not a computer.
And don't bother with the "pass on the family business" thing, because if a plumber wants to pass his business on to his son, he better teach him plumbing.
If a plumber does a job and then dies before collecting payment, his heirs are entitled to the money. That's the reasoning behind extending copyright past the life of the author.
That being said, the current "life plus the number of years since Steamboat Willie was released" is insane.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
There are other assets that get passed on after death, like stocks and wealth and houses and boats. Why should copyright be any different?
Well let's see. All the things you mention are MATERIAL THINGS. Copyright is not. You're damned right we should treat IDEAS different from MATERIAL GOODS.
A lifetime is generally unfair to a lot of authors - if the old dude wrote his greatest work only days, months, or two or three years before croaking, he and his estate make very little.
You don't seem to understand why we have copyright law. The purpose of copyright isn't to enrich the creator and his heirs, it's to encourage the creator to create more. If he dies, that's over. If the heirs want to get rich on creations, let them write their own shit. And don't bother with the "pass on the family business" thing, because if a plumber wants to pass his business on to his son, he better teach him plumbing.
And if an old dude keeps writing because he knows it will help his younger wife and children once he's gone, he's been suitably encouraged.
I wouldn't tie life to it at all. Just make it 50 years and be done. Or make it 15, $1 renewal for another 35.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
OK, I'll repeat. "In effect, we have non-expiring copyright law today."
A copyright on a corporate work goes into effect right now, tonight. How many people born tonight will live long enough to see that work go into the public domain? 95 years is a long time. My great-grandchildren may be dying of old age by that time!!
So, IN EFFECT, we have non-expiring copyright law.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Wrong. Most writers certainly DO own the copyright to their work. Even journalists. The publisher has the right to publish it, and keeps most of the profit, but usually even those rights expire after the book goes out of print, or for journalists, a short time after the original publication (which is why columnists can publish books collecting or based on their columns).
Just look at the copyright notices on a book: almost always it lists the author's name.
Copyright isn't and was never designed to be an asset of any kind. Art works are to be considered part of the public good, and to encourage their creation, we hold our breath and let the artists have temporary Copyright despite the stench.
Copyright is to encourage the creation of public domain accessible works, which should be free to all within a reasonable time to enrich society and culture.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
"But that's just a nonsense. The copyright on works expire every day."
No, they don't. Not in some countries for a while now. Not when copyright is arbitrarily and retroactively extended beyond the expiry date that applied when the work was originally created. In the U.S., there won't be any new works entering the public domain (unless people explicitly put them there) until 2019.
How much do you want to bet that before 2019 some enterprising legislator will come up with some dubious reason for extending copyright terms yet again, and "stealing" another 20 years from the public domain?
The problem is what it always was.
Society at large are bearing the burden of those creators. And if we're going to bear that burden, we should be able to maximize our return on investment by distributing the creations as far and wide as we can.
Copyright destroys value. It's effect is to systematically remove access to knowledge and culture from the majority of people in the world.
We need a different mechanism that doesn't destroy the value of the creation as a side effect of calculating the reward due for the creative act. If we agree on one, we'll all get richer. Societies that refuse to do so will have a population that are stupid and ignorant compared to the global average, and will be on a one way ticket to third world status.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth