Thoughts From the Register of Copyrights
This past Friday evening I had the pleasure of attending a talk by Marybeth Peters, the US Register of Copyrights. The Register of Copyrights is the Person In Charge of the copyright office, which is actually a part of the Library of Congress. In that role, she is not only responsible for the work of administering the many copyright applications that come in, but she is also responsible for advising members of Congress on policy and interpretation of the copyright laws. Peters has been with the copyright office since the beginning of her legal career in 1964, and has been the Register of Copyrights since 1994. She is arguably the top expert on copyright in the country.
Peters’ message is simple: that the principle of copyright is to give creators the control over their work necessary to enable them to make a living at their craft, and that principal is in danger because we have begun to create a statutory system that cannot be understood by the average person (or lawyers either, for that matter). If the people can’t understand the law, then they won’t obey it.
Peters sees the challenge of the digital age as making the copyright law work with the new technologies, but to make sure the law is clear and administratively do-able. If the law is vague and administratively cumbersome, then people who would otherwise want to do things the right way will throw up their hands and say “I’ll just take it for free.”
Peters also warns that the underlying principle of copyright should not be pushed out of sight. She fears that the true agenda of many of the companies involved in infringement lawsuits is much larger than the issues in the suits themselves, and that the entire framework of copyright law may be under attack.
The use of music recordings and performances has been the biggest battleground in the last ten years, starting with the Napster case. Peters points out that Napster brought the concept of copyright to the average person in a way that has never before happened in history. Although there have been raging copyright issues in the past, the development of the internet and person to person technology has involved the individual user in a way that has never before been the case.
The danger in that is that the average person doesn’t understand copyright well enough to form thoughtful opinions, and I personally believe that large companies are exploiting that lack of knowledge to start a backlash against copyright laws.
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