Copyright and Authors

For three centuries, publishers have touted the virtues of copyright and the need to protect authors. Authors must be treated fairly, they say. Authors must be rewarded for their work. And copyright is the tool by which publishers can do this. The benefit to publishers is incidental.

The argument is illustrated clearly in a recent article by Peter Givler, the Executive Director of the American Association of University Presses (Givler, 2003). The essay has the title "Copyright: It's for the Public Good." In his essay, Givler is condescending. ("The academics and librarians I know are smart, interesting, delightful people, but they do have some peculiar ideas about copyright.") He is a little smug. ("I think I understand academic values well enough, and the challenge of trying to make this scholarly publishing business serve those unbusinesslike ends has made my career interesting...") And he is sometimes misleading. ("Shakespeare, whose works are so well known, yet whose texts exist in so many versions, furnishes an instructive example of the perils of authorship before copyright."1 ) He ends his essay with a rousing declaration that paraphrases Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg to say copyright is "good law precisely because it is such a powerful force for public good."

Of course, some aspects of copyright are good, both for authors and for the public. Without copyright, publishing would fall into anarchy, as it has at certain times in the past. Large parts of our modern world—literature, movies, and music—depend on copyright. Even esoteric scholarly publishing depends on copyright (in spite of recent suggestions to the contrary by some ill-advised members of Congress who want to do away with copyright for all federally funded research). But copyright is not for authors, and copyright is not about fairness. Copyright is a complex system of laws and traditions, created to balance the rights and interests of three groups involved in publishing— authors, publishers, and public.

Not so, writes Peter Givler. He claims that copyright is simple and self-evident: ...MORE

(Also appeared in First Monday)