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Re: New book on copyright



Quite interesting, and thanks to Mr. Wood for this link.  I believe that
the worst abuse of copyright is to suppress information of interest to the
public, and the most egregious flaunter of that abuse is the "Church" of
Scientology, which has sued whistleblowers, threatened publishers and
bought the copyright to exposes where it could intimidate authors and
publishers.  There is apparently nothing in copyright law or precedent that
precludes its use to completely suppress publication of evidence of
criminal activity.  This makes copyright different from attorney-client
privilege, which the tobacco industry tried to use to suppress leaked
documents.  The "crime-fraud" exception to privilege thwarted that
attempt.  Copyright law needs  to change not only to allow creativity but
also to allow freedom of speech and exposure of crime.

Just my opinion and not that of my employer, but it grows out of both
personal experience (with the "Church") and my job as project archivist in
the Tobacco Control Archives, which was founded with the "Pentagon Papers"
of the tobacco industry.

Arel Lucas
Tobacco Control Archives
Library and Center for Knowledge Management
University of California San Francisco
http://www.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/
------------------------------
At 02:38 PM 1/9/2002 -0600, Wood, Thomas wrote:
I just read a review of 'THE FUTURE OF IDEAS: The Fate of the Commons in a
Connected World' by Lawrence Lessig (352 pages. Random House) in the New
York Times Book Review
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/06/books/review/06ZALEWST.html

Quite interesting -- particularly if, like me, you feel that copyright law
is becoming an oppressive tool to enhance the profits of huge media
conglomerates at the expense of scholarship and artistic creativity.

The reviewer (Daniel Zalewski) writes:
"Lessig's passionate new book, 'The Future of Ideas,' argues that America's
concern with protecting intellectual property has become an oppressive
obsession. 'The distinctive feature of modern American copyright law,' he
writes, 'is its almost limitless bloating.' As Lessig sees it, a system
originally designed to provide incentives for innovation has increasingly
become a weapon for attacking cutting-edge creativity...In the end, 'The
Future of Ideas' is less valuable as legal scholarship than as sweeping
cultural criticism. It's a manifesto that shakes you up, making you aware of
how much is lost when a culture turns 'ideas' into 'intellectual property.'"

Thomas J. Wood
Archivist
Archives/Special Collections LIB 144
University of Illinois at Springfield
P.O. Box 19243
Springfield IL 62794-9243
217-206-6520 | wood@uis.edu | http://www.uis.edu/library/lib-arch

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