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SAA challenges copyright term extension
One of the things that a national archival organization can
do is speak on national issues of archival policy. We have seen
this in action recently with Steve Hensen's excellent essay in the
Washington Post that argued eloquently in support of public access to the
records of government. The Society of American Archivists recently
spoke out on another important issue: the copyright status of unpublished
manuscripts.
The SAA has joined with a coalition of information organizations,
including the Association of Research Libraries, the American Library
Association, the Digitial Futures Coalition, and others, in the
submission of an amicus brief to the Supreme Court requesting that the
Court hear a challenge to the constitutionality of copyright term
extension. In 1998 Congress passed the Copyright Term Extension Act
increasing the duration of copyright from life of the author plus fifty
years to life of the author plus seventy years. The effect was to
stop for twenty years the addition of any published work to the public
domain. As Roy Rosenzweig noted in a recent article in the Journal
of American History, ?[f]or historians, copyright protection has
redlined... much twentieth-century history...? In response, a group
of publishers and preservationists filed suit challenging the
constitutionality of copyright term extension. The suit, Eldred v.
Ashcroft, argues that "perpetual copyright on the installment
plan" is in direct violation of the constitutional stipulation that
the monopoly rights granted by copyright be for a limited term. The
suit lost in the Federal Appeals court, and recently the plaintiffs asked
the Supreme Court to rule on the issue.
The brief submitted by the SAA and others asking that the Court hear the
case draws heavily on the problems archivists and historians encounter
when faced with excessive copyright terms. The brief notes the harm
that is done to scholarship when material with unknown or uncertain
copyright status does not enter the public domain in a timely
fashion. Effort must be spent instead investigating the copyright
status of works. In some cases the inability to identify copyright
ownership has meant that some scholarship has not been published.
While the brief itself was written by students in a legal clinic at
American University, much of the information in the brief and many of the
examples were provided the SAA Council's Working Group on Intellectual
Property.
A copy of the amicus brief can be found at
<http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/eldredvashcroft/cert/library-amicus.pdf>;
more information on the suit is available at
<http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/eldredvashcroft/>.
I would encourage all members of the ARCHIVES list who care about the
national archival enterprise and who are not yet members of the SAA to
join. The SAA can only speak out when it has the active voluntary
and financial support of an engaged membership. Membership
information is available at the SAA website
<http://www.archivists.org>.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Peter B. Hirtle
Vice President/President-elect
Society of American Archivists
Co-Director
pbh6@cornell.edu
Cornell Institute for Digital Collections
607/255-4033 (ph)
2B Kroch
Library
607/255-9524 (fax)
Ithaca, NY 14853
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