We live in an age of ever-expanding copyright law. The length of time
that elapses before a creative work enters the public domain is now so
long that many items published early last century are still protected by
copyright.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act
is regularly used to remove copyright infringing content from the
Internet. In some cases the take-down is legitimate, but in other cases
the DMCA is misused and things that are legitimately protected by "fair
use" are taken down. Content creators can fight a take down, but doing
so is usually a laborious process. Conversely, some content creators and
consumers attempt to redefine or expand "fair use" to include any use
they wish so they can use source materials without getting permission or
complying with the law. But were things always the way they are now?
No. They were not.
How did we get to this point? To answer that question, I would like to direct you to a recent journal article by Meredith L. McGill,
who is an associate professor of English at Rutgers University.
McGill's article entitled "Copyright and Intellectual Property: The
State of the Disciple" was published in the latest volume of the
academic journal Book History, the professional journal of The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing.
The article is an overview of existing scholarship about the history of
copyright and intellectual property. Despite the fact that it is a
meta-history written for a specialized audience (scholars of book
history), McGill's article serves as an excellent introduction for any
reader to the changes that have taken place in copyright laws over the
past few centuries.
The first major section, "Copyright, Author's Rights, and the History
of the Book," highlights the origin and development of both copyright
law and authors' rights by examining the scholarly literature on these
topics. Perhaps the key point to note is that copyright did not emerge
at the same time as the introduction of printing. Copyright law as we
know it began in the eighteen century with the British Statute of Anne (1710).
Also worth noting is just how recently U.S. copyright law has changed
into its current form. It is has only been a few decades since the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976
altered copyright law so that copyright was granted on creation instead
of upon registration and greatly extended the length of time copyright
protection lasts (a term of 28 years with one renewal became the life of
the author plus 50 years). That act and several subsequent laws are
what make U.S. copyright law what it is today.
The next section, "The Place of the Law in British Publishing,"
examines British copyright law, beginning with the ways publishing
worked before the Statute of Anne and continuing into modern times.
McGill cites a wide variety of quality scholarship in this section, but
the most interesting is her examination of Adrian John's Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates.
She marks the publication of John's work as the point in which "[b]ook
history and contemporary intellectual property discourse may be said
finally to join forces." McGill's summary of Piracy connects John's approach to the rise of the copyleft movement, making it of particular interest to Opensource.com readers.
Next McGill covers "Domestic and International Copyright in the
United States" and looks at how copyright law developed in the United
States of America. McGill spends some time discussing how originally
(and for the first century of U.S. copyright law) copyright protection
only applied to citizens and residents. Foreign works were not covered
by copyright laws and could be published by American publishers without
them having to pay the authors—though in some cases American publishers
would pay foreign authors out of courtesy or so they could publish an
"authorized edition." This section also examines the expansion of what
is covered by copyright, and the changes that have taken place as
copyright law expanded to cover photographs, sound recordings, film,
television, and other things.
Lastly, McGill covers topics in need of further study in a section
entitled "Investment Properties." This section is much more useful to a
book historian than it is to a general reader, but it still raises
several points of interest. In particular is McGill's discussion of
copyright outside the Anglo-American sphere. For example, she looks at
scholarship relating to China in order to show how a country with a
different intellectual heritage has a different take on intellectual
property. She also covers scholarship relating to scientific works,
religious texts, theatrical works, works that were considered too
ephemeral to be covered by copyright, works considered too perverse to
be granted copyright protection, and several other topics.
McGill's article should be required reading for anyone interested in
the history of copyright or in copyright reform. Understanding the past
is crucial to changing the future, and McGill provides a great way to
understand the past. The article itself is an excellent summary of the
story so far, and her "Notes" section includes a large selection of
interesting scholarly works for those who wish to dig deeper into the
various topics covered in her article.
Book History is, unfortunately, not an open access journal, but the current volume is freely available to anyone. You can download McGill's article and all the other articles from Book History Volume 16
from Project Muse. However, as soon as a new volume comes out (which is
in the Fall), Volume 16 will no longer be freely available. At that
point, you will need to have access to a library that subscribes to the
journal if you want to read it. So, make sure to download the article as
soon as possible if you want to add it to your "to read" pile.
Source: opensource.com
McGill, Meredith L. "Copyright and Intellectual Property: The State of the Discipline." Book History 16, no. 1 (2013): 387–427. doi:10.1353/bh.2013.0010.
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