Copyright vs. the Classics

by on January 4, 2007 · 6 comments

Matt Yglesias points out that the most important thing we need to do to address the problem of the classics becoming inaccessible involves fixing copyright law:

All the ‘sphere’s a twitter about some libraries dumping little-read classics in favor of more high-demand contemporary bestsellers. Julian’s post on this, however, inspired me to remark that far and away the most important thing for the preservation of the classics has nothing to do with library policies and everything to do with intellectual property policy. In a world where classic works enter the public domain, people will get them one way or another. They’ll be available for free download on the internet. E-book technology will improve. Print copies will cheaply available to people who want to buy them. Whether or not these things are in local libraries sort of won’t be a huge deal one way or another. Now, traditionally, copyrights have had limited durations and “classic” books, being old by definition, tend to be in the public domain and hence widely available. In a digital era, they’ll be super-available. But the emerging trend of the digital era is for retroactive extensions of copyright terms meaning that nothing new will ever enter the public domain. Ever.

Quite so. The vast majority of books from the 20s, 30s, 40s, and so on are currently sitting on dusty library shelves, hardly ever looked at by anyone. We now have the technology to digitize all those books and turn them into a veritable treasure trove of easily-searchable information about decades gone by. Yet in order to ensure that Disney continues to turn a profit on Mickey Mouse, making those hundreds of thousands of commercially worthless works available to the general public is effectively illegal. In effect, 80 years of 20th century culture is in danger of being locked up so that a small number of copyright holders can profit from the miniscule fraction of works from the 1920s that still have commercial value. It’s really quite a shame.

And don’t get me started on the way that copyright law is hampering film preservation.

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About Tim Lee

Timothy B. Lee (Contributor, 2004-2009) is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He is currently a PhD student and a member of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. He contributes regularly to a variety of online publications, including Ars Technica, Techdirt, Cato @ Liberty, and The Angry Blog. He has been a Mac bigot since 1984, a Unix, vi, and Perl bigot since 1998, and a sworn enemy of HTML-formatted email for as long as certain companies have thought that was a good idea. You can reach him by email at leex1008@umn.edu.

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  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/14019452 Steve R.

    Tim: You wrote: “Yet in order to ensure that Disney continues to turn a profit on Mickey Mouse, making those hundreds of thousands of commercially worthless works available to the general public is effectively illegal.”. It took a bit of mulling over before I figured out what you were indirectly refrencing for this activity to be considered “illegal”. I assume you are refering to the effect of the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act that retroactively extended copyright period for most existing copyrights to 95 years and that of many new copy-rights to 70 years after the author’s death.

    Jason Mazzone wrote “Copy Fraud”, which is a good article on copyright. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=787244

  • http://www2.blogger.com/profile/14380731108416527657 Steve R.

    Tim: You wrote: “Yet in order to ensure that Disney continues to turn a profit on Mickey Mouse, making those hundreds of thousands of commercially worthless works available to the general public is effectively illegal.”. It took a bit of mulling over before I figured out what you were indirectly refrencing for this activity to be considered “illegal”. I assume you are refering to the effect of the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act that retroactively extended copyright period for most existing copyrights to 95 years and that of many new copy-rights to 70 years after the author’s death.

    Jason Mazzone wrote “Copy Fraud”, which is a good article on copyright.
    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract…

  • http://www.techliberation.com/ Tim Lee

    Steve,

    You’re correct. Sorry I wasn’t more clear.

  • http://www.techliberation.com/ Tim Lee

    Steve,

    You’re correct. Sorry I wasn’t more clear.

  • http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com/ enigma_foundry

    Quite so. The vast majority of books from the 20s, 30s, 40s, and so on are currently sitting on dusty library shelves, hardly ever looked at by anyone.

    Yes, this is true but I would take it one step further and state that these works, have, in effect been stolen from the Public Domain. When those works were copyrighted, the term was limited, and, to make a tangible property analogy, (always a dangerous thing to be sure, but in this case it is particularly justified) it’s as if someone retroactively decided that who ever ownde the proerty my house is sitting on fifty years ago suddenly came into title of my property.

    This copyright extension is just theft.

  • http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com eee_eff

    Quite so. The vast majority of books from the 20s, 30s, 40s, and so on are currently sitting on dusty library shelves, hardly ever looked at by anyone.

    Yes, this is true but I would take it one step further and state that these works, have, in effect been stolen from the Public Domain. When those works were copyrighted, the term was limited, and, to make a tangible property analogy, (always a dangerous thing to be sure, but in this case it is particularly justified) it’s as if someone retroactively decided that who ever ownde the proerty my house is sitting on fifty years ago suddenly came into title of my property.

    This copyright extension is just theft.

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