Copyright law originated with the introduction of the printing press to England in the late fifteenth century.
Licensing Act of 1662 confirmed that monopoly and established a register of licensed books to be controlled by the stationers’ Company. It is a group of printers with the authority to censor publications.
the Licensing Act of 1662 lapsed during this year which lead to a relaxation of government censorship.
Parliament established the Statute of Anne to address the concerns of English booksellers and printers. The 1710 act, Statute of Anne, established principles of authors’ ownership of copyright and a fixed time period of protection of copyrighted works. Which is 14 years and can be renewable for 14 more if the author is still alive.
U.S. government created the law of copyright. According to Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution, “the Congress shall have power...to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discovers.”
The First Congress implemented the copyright provision of the U.S. Constitution in 1790. This law granted American authors the right to print, reprint, or publish their work for a period of fourteen years and to renew for another fourteen.
There were revisions to the copyright provision of the U.S. Constitution. The time period of protection to copyrighted works was extended to twenty-eight years with the possibility of a fourteen-year extension. The Congress claimed that the extention was to give American authors the same protection as those in Europe.
Because of Wheaton vs. Peters case, the copyright law was revised. The U.S. Constitution prevailed, i.e., “that patents and copyrights are exclusive rights of limited duration, granted in order to serve the public interest in promoting the creation and dissemination of new works.”
Because of Folsom and Marshs case about using some of other people’s work in their own original work created the basis of the “fair use” doctrine.
Stowe vs. Thomas case Harriet Beecher Stowe sued F.W. Thomas, publisher of a German-language periodical, Die Freie Presse, in 1853. Thomas translated “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” into German and sold it in the United States without the author’s permission. Siva Vaidhyanathan, the “anti-property” rhetoric in the decision encouraged many American authors to take a stand in favor of copyright as property until the copyright law was revised in 1870.
Revision of Copyright Act The administration of copyright registrations moved from the individual district courts to the Library of Congress Copyright Office.
By the 1880s cheap books flooded the American Market.
Berne Convention The goals of Berne Convention provided the basis for mutual acknowledgement of copyright between sovereign nations and promoted the development of international norms in copyright protection. The European nations established a mutually satisfactory uniform copyright law to replace the need for separate registration in every county. It’s been revised five times since 1886. United States became a Berne signatory in 1988.
Authors, Publishers, and printers’ unions joined together to support an international copyright bill.
International Copyright Treaty “Cheap books” movement, spread rapidly by small upstart publishers after the Civil War.
A major revision of the U.S. copyright Act was completed in 1909. “"The main object to be desired in expanding copyright protection accorded to music has been to give the composer an adequate return for the value of his composition, and it has been a serious and difficult task to combine the protection of the composer with the protection of the public, and to so frame an act that it would accomplish the double purpose of securing to the composer an adequate return for all use made of his composition and at the same time prevent the formation of oppressive monopolies, which might be founded upon the very rights granted to the composer for the purpose of protecting his interests" (H.R. Rep. No. 2222, 60th Cong., 2nd Sess., p. 7 [1909]).”
Williams and Wilkins Co. V. United States. Williams and Wilkins, publishers of specialized medical journals, sued the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) charing that the agencies had infringed copyright by making unauthorized photocopied of articles featured within their publications and distributing them to medical researchers. This case showed the Congress that there is a need for congressional treatment of the problems of photocopying.
Revision of the U.S. Copyright Act The 1976 act preempted all previous copyright law and extended the period of protection to life of the author plus 50 years. The act covered the following areas: scope and subject matter of works covered, exclusive rights, copyright term, copyright notice and copyright registration, copyright infringement, fair use and defenses and remedies to infringement. With this revision, for the first time the fair use and first sale doctrines were codified, and copyright was extended to unpublished works. In addition, a new section was added, section 108, that allowed library photocopying without permission for purposes of scholarship, preservation, and interlibrary loan under certain circumstances. There’s an addition which is that there is an exception to the exclusive rights of owners to make and spread copies of their work. "the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright." Class guidelines- "Agreement on Guidelines for Classroom Copying in Not-for-Profit Educational Institutions with Respect to Books and Periodicals" CONTU Process- The National Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works (CONTU) was appointed by the Congress to create guidelines for the “minimum standards of educational fair use” under the 1976 act. "The CONTU guidelines were developed to assist librarians and copyright proprietors in understanding the amount of photocopying for use in inter-library loan arrangements permitted under the copyright law.”
Berne Convention The U.S. became a Berne signatory in 1988. The major changes for the U.S. copyright system after joined Berne were: greater protection for proprietors, new copyright relationships with twenty-four countries, and elimination of the requirement of copyright notice for copyright protection.
The Congress revised the Copyright Act to stop commercial lending of computer software. "copy of a computer program which is lent by such library has affixed to the packaging containing the program a warning of copyright."
The U.S. Supreme Court found that the U.S. constitution requires that, for a work to receive copyright protection, it must reflect creative expression or originality.
Amendment to Section 304 of Title 17 Congress amended section 304 of Title 17 making copyright renewal automatic.
The working group of Intellectual Property Rights was established to explore the application and effectiveness of copyright law and the National Information Infrastructure.
The court found that a commercial use could be a fair use especially when the markets for an original work and a transformative work are different. The Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights sponsored a series of activities to solicit input on copyright issues and the NII. CONFU sponsered the Conference on Fair Use. The definitive was issued in 1998. "it was clear that fair use was alive and well in the digital age, and that attempts to draft widely supported guidelines will be complicated by the often competing interests of the copyright owner and user communities"
The culmination of the NII Working Group’s efforts was release of the white paier in september 1995. It contains recommendations to revise the Copyright Act of 1976 and presented a lengthy legal analysis of current copyright law.
President Clinton signed the Uruguay Round Agreements Act which implemented the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade including Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property. Arrangements in the URAA amended U.S. copyright law. On January, copyright for works from desirable countries was restored.
The National Conference of commisioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) passed the Uniform computer information Transaction act (UCITA). UCITA is a proposed state law that seeks to create a unified approach to the licensing of software and information. The law increased the minimum statutory damages for infringements from $500 to $750 and increased the maximum from $20,000 to $30,000. The Maximum for willful infringement increased from $100,000 to $150,000.
On March 14, 2000, Governor Jim Gilmore of Virginia signed UCITA into law. Virginia was the first state to approve the legislation. Maryland passed it in April 2000. The highly controversial legislation is under consideration in several state legislatures. 2000: Librarian of Congress Issued Ruling on DMCA The Anti-Circumvention Provision of the DMCA, Section 1201(a)(1), allows exemptions from the prohibition on circumvention of technological protection measures for "persons who are users of a copyrighted work which is in a particular class of works, if such persons are, or are likely to be . . . adversely affected." Congress directed the Register of Copyrights to review the section and to issue recommendations to the Librarian of Congress on "classes of works" that should be exempt from the ban on circumvention. Members of the Shared Legal Capability (made up of representatives of the five major library associations: the American Library Association, the American Association of Law Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, the Medical Library Association, and the Special Libraries Association) had called for a broad exemption from technological protection measures in order to ensure that library users could exercise fair use of protected material. The Assistant Secretary for Commerce, Gregory Rohde, noted that "information crucial to supporting scholarship, research, comment, criticism, new reporting, life long learning, and other related lawful uses of copyrighted information should never become available only to those with the ability to pay." He called for exemptions "grounded in the principle of fair use" that would allow the public to fully realize their access to lawfully acquired information. On October 27, 2000, the Librarian of Congress announced the exemption of two narrow classes of works: compilations of lists of websites blocked by filtering software applications; and literary works, including computer programs and databases, protected by access control mechanisms that fail to permit access because of malfunction, damage, or obsolescence. In issuing the rulemaking, the Librarian of Congress noted several concerns and stated his intent to call upon Congress to reconsider selected aspects of the copyright legislation. In particular, he noted the "potential damage to scholarship" and possible harm to "American creativity" resulting from provisions in the statute. ALL INFO FROM http://www.arl.org/pp/ppcopyright/copyresources/copytimeline.shtml
State Sovereign Immunity “According to the Eleventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, state entities, including universities and libraries, may not be held liable in federal court cases. After a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions held that the sovereign immunity clause exempts state entities from adherence to federal intellectual property laws, the Texas Northern District Court took up the question of state immunity from copyright infringement litigation in January 1998. The court concluded that a state agency cannot be held liable for copyright infringement in federal court. In April 1998, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the decision, finding that the University of Houston, a state agency, could not be held liable in federal court for copyright infringements. On November 1, 2001, Patrick Leahy (Chair, Committee on the Judiciary, D-VT) introduced S. 1611, the "Intellectual Property Protection Restoration Act of 2001," to address what is seen by many as an inequitable situation under which state entities can use federal law to protect their own intellectual property but may infringe the copyright, patent, and trademark laws that protect others' intellectual property. S. 1611 would make the availability of federal intellectual property protection laws contingent upon the voluntary waiver by states of their own immunity from suit under the sovereign immunity clause of the U.S. Constitution.” ALL INFO FROM http://www.arl.org/pp/ppcopyright/copyresources/copytimeline.shtml
Sent. Ernest Hollings introduced the “Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act”. The bill requires that any device that can record, receive, or store copyrighted digital information comply with copy-protections encoded in digital works such as DVDs, CDs, and electronic books. ARL, ALA, and AALL drafted two amendments: 1)To clarify that terms in non-negotiated licenses would not be enforceable if they prohibited activities normally permissible under federal copyright law; and 2.) To broaden the criteria for declaring such contract terms unenforceable. CTEA retrospectively extended copyright protection of existing works by 20 years, from the life of the author plus 50 years to life of the author plus 70 years. The Act prospectively added 20 years of copyright protection to future works. Senate Approves Distance Education Legislation
United States Supreme Court ruled in Eldred v. Ashcroft, a challenge to the constitutionality of the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. The court rejected the suer’s argument that repeated retroactive copyright term extensions would be in violation of intent of the constitution’s copyright clause’s “for limited Times” term.
The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act was established on April 27, 2005. The act includes Artist’s Rights and Theft Prevention Act of 2005. There were also penalties for individuals who record motion pictures in a theater or for individuals who distribute unpublished works, such as movies or software.
HR 5438, “Orphan Works Act of 2006” was introduced to the subcommittee and is pending before the House of committee on the Judiciary. Works that are done by authors that couldn’t be located are called Orphan works.
We'd love to hear from you. Please send questions or feedback to the below email addresses.
Before contacting us, you may wish to visit our FAQs page which has lots of useful info on Tiki-Toki.
We can be contacted by email at: hello@tiki-toki.com.
You can also follow us on twitter at twitter.com/tiki_toki.
If you are having any problems with Tiki-Toki, please contact us as at: help@tiki-toki.com
Close