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The Woman Who Established Fair Use

Posted by kdawson on from the one-of-a-kind dept.

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.'"

12 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. So We Got... by akpoff · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "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.

  2. A "heroine"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

  3. Reguarding by captnbmoore · · Score: 5, Informative

    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"
    1. Re:Reguarding by PPH · · Score: 5, Funny

      But you do understand that the copyright law's intent is to encourage the creation of new works. With life plus 50 years, there are untold numbers of authors dead only 10 or 20 years who might be willing to rise and take a crack at just one more novel.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    2. Re:Reguarding by Robert+Plamondon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The old 28 years + optional renewal was a brilliant system. Abandonware entered the public domain after 28 years. The vast bulk of copyrighted material is abanoned well before this. The tiny fraction of material that's still making money after 28 years could be renewed for another 28. Also, you don't have to hire detectives to find out when an obscure author died, just to figure out whether a work was in the public domain or not. The old system was better.

    3. Re:Reguarding by swillden · · Score: 5, Insightful

      We really should go back to that or life of the author or 20 years which ever comes later.

      That would be a good start, but I'd argue that it's really too long.

      The question is: What's the shortest term that would enable most creators to capture most of the potential income from their works? That's what it should be, and not much more.

      The goal is to provide sufficient incentive to produce works, but get the works into the public domain as soon as possible. That's how copyright promotes progress.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  4. Ya kiding right? by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Ya kiding right? by Selanit · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If you ask me, the current system around registrations is fine (no registration means you can only claim for actual damages, having a registration causes punitive to come into play)

      But it also has a major downside in the fact that it's not clear who owns what. Also, the lack of registration has extended copyright over basically everything. The grocery list I jotted down this afternoon is subject to copyright. Heck, this post is subject to copyright.

      And it's not as if registration is an inherently bad idea. There are two issues to address with it -- the cost, and the difficulty of processing registrations. The last time we tried mandatory registration, the price was set by the government, and the processing had to be done by hand on paper. We can do better than that.

      I would prefer mandatory registration similar to the way the domain name system works. Thus:

      1. The Copyright Office determines what information is needed for a copyright registration.
      2. The Copyright Office creates a database to track that information.
      3. The Copyright Office does not gather registration information itself. Instead, it accredits registrars to do so.
      4. The accredited copyright registrars compete with one another to offer the lowest prices and the most convenient service for registering copyrights.
      5. An author (or corporation) selects a registrar, pays whatever fee that registrar has settled on, and gives the registrar the required information.
      6. The registrar transmits the information to the Copyright Office, where it is logged in the database.

      In this way, we get a definitive record of who owns which copyright, and exactly when the work was registered. Because the registrars are in competition with one another, we get cheap registration fees and convenient service. And by making registration mandatory once again, we have ensured that copyright is only applied in cases where the author wants it.

      It's obviously not a perfect system. I imagine we'd probably have to deal with fraudulent or competing copyright registrations. But we already have those anyway.

      A bigger concern would be whether or not the market for copyright registration services would be large enough to sustain itself. Copyright terms are very, very long. The lifetime of the author plus 70 years, or 95 years for corporately owned works. Say I'm the owner of H. K. Fessenscheimer & Daughters, Copyright Registrar. If one author registers a book, that's one sale. Then I don't get any more business from that author till they've created something new to copyright, which could take years, or might never happen.

      So in order to generate enough business to sustain a strongly competitive registration market, we'd probably have to require renewal at shorter intervals. Say, a copyright registration lasts for five or ten years, and then you (or your estate) has to re-register. If you don't, then you get a grace period of maybe six months, and then the copyright expires and cannot be renewed.

      Of course, large institutions which do a lot of copyright registrations (corporations, universities) would be free to establish in-house registrars which would handle all registrations and renewals for their own copyrights without involving a third party. Hell, they could even write their own software to do it. Amortized over time, their costs for registering and renewing copyrights would be extremely low.

      I'm sure that the existing copyright holders will scream bloody murder at the idea. They worked really hard to get rid of registration. They wouldn't be happy to see it come back.

      Also, we might not be able to do anything like this without violating the Berne Treaty. So perhaps it's just a fantasy. But I really wish we could.

  5. Re:Now I know who to blame by Runaway1956 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  6. Re:Now I know who to blame by Kalten · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    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.

  7. Re:Now I know who to blame by Dun+Malg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  8. Re:Now I know who to blame by somanyrobots · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.