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December 15, 2004
Title 17 v. Reality
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Frank Field, whom I miss dearly living out on this coast, is at Freedom v. Control, Rights Management in the Digital Age, where Jonathan Zittrain, Wendy Seltzer, Hal Abelson, and Siva Vaidhyanathan are speaking today. He's blogging as much of it as he can, and captures a few nice bits from Jonathan right off the bat:
"[In] the language of current copyright debate, libraries are bastions of organized piracy -- an organized conspiracy to share a book, rather than buy one; note that this [concept] runs up against yesterday’s Google search announcement in libraries."
"[We have] two copyright regimes - title 17 and reality - collision between these two regimes continues to shape everything that goes on in this."
Comments (4)
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1. Mary Minow on December 16, 2004 11:04 AM writes...
Actually, the first sale doctrine (17 USC 109) makes it possible for libraries to share their books WITHOUT being pirates. In many other countries (England, Germany, Canada etc.), libraries do not have that exception to rely on, and in fact must pay a "public lending right" royalty to the author, based on the number of times the book circulates.
Permalink to Comment2. Donna Wentworth on December 16, 2004 12:02 PM writes...
Yes, I believe that was Jonathan's point -- that if we take the content industry rhetoric at face value, libraries would be considered dens of piracy, when of course they are not.
I had no idea that there was a "public lending right" royalty in England, Germany, Canada, and elsewhere. That seems very sad to me.
On the Title 17 v. reality, I believe Jonathan was making a broader point about how some parts of copyright law don't jibe with current copynorms.
Permalink to Comment3. Mary Minow on December 16, 2004 2:03 PM writes...
It would be awful in this country, but it may be more reasonable in other settings. The royalties are given only to national authors, to encourage local talent. (e.g. only Canadian authors get royalties from their works lent by Canadian libraries). There were some symposia to consider adopting this regime in the U.S. maybe twenty years ago, but the idea did not take on. If it did (absent other funding), we would be left with decimated public library collections in the U.S.
Permalink to Comment4. Donna Wentworth on December 16, 2004 4:45 PM writes...
Very interesting, Mary -- thank you for sharing this information.
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