Pamela Samuelson
Abstract
Considering the issues involved in developing a simplified new copyright law and associated administrative mechanisms.
- Samuelson, P. Preliminary thoughts on copyright reform. Utah Law Review (forthcoming 2007).Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Does copyright law need to be reformed?
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Reviews
Anthony L. Clapes
Pam Samuelson is a tireless and successful academic critic of copyright law, whose work is no doubt familiar to many members of the ACM. In this brief article, she outlines her next major copyright project: the creation of a model copyright law that she hopes will supplant the existing federal copyright statute at some future time, when Congress may be willing to enact a wholesale replacement for that statute. The question in the title poses the article’s message. Samuelson provides a list of attributes of the current copyright law that she would like to see reformed. Reform, as applied to statutes, usually means “fix the defects.” Readers wishing for a more detailed explanation of what needs reforming in the Copyright Act will have to look elsewhere. Samuelson provides a citation to her upcoming paper to be published in the Utah Law Review , but that source is not readily accessible to all. Thematically, Samuelson’s copyright thinking has long been user oriented. She is wary of certain aspects of copyright law: the ones that extend to new media communications or new means of expressing ideas, extending the period of protection for copyrighted works, and discouraging people from making novel uses of other people’s copyrights. From the list of copyright negatives contained in this article, it is clear that her wariness will be reflected in the model copyright law that she and others have undertaken to provide to Congress. Samuelson feels that digital and network technologies have “democratized” the creation and dissemination of content, creating particular challenges for copyright law; the “copyright industries,” as shorthand for those industries that would not exist without copyright protection, including but not limited to the publishing, movie, music, and software industries, have disproportionate power in Congress as compared to copyright users (including, presumably, the kids who dance to copyright-protected music before their videocams and upload the resulting clips to YouTube, or folks who use Photoshop to alter someone else’s photo, downloaded from the Web, by pasting an image of themselves in the scene and posting the result on Flickr); and the courts that must interpret copyright law are confused about that law. To a considerable degree, Samuelson is right on all counts. However, whether the cure she proposes is better than the disease she perceives is very much open to debate. For example, the fact that digital and network technologies make it easy to reproduce, alter, and disseminate copyrighted digital works does not lead inexorably to the conclusion that the copyright law needs to be made more user oriented. Indeed, it may imply just the opposite, and Samuelson does not help us understand the need for reform. Also, the fact that copyright users do not have as much influence with Congress as do the copyright industries does not automatically mean that copyright law has been corrupted by those industries; the issue is referenced but not explained. Finally, the federal courts have had a long and reasonably successful history of adapting copyright principles to new technologies, despite occasional initial confusion engendered by novel devices or protocols that enable copyrightable expression, such as copiers, fax machines, computers, file transfer protocol (FTP), transmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP), torrent software protocols, mobile phones, and YouTube. One thing is certain: the model copyright law ultimately produced by Samuelson and her colleagues is destined to be a sounding board in future debates over modifications to the Copyright Act. Online Computing Reviews Service
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