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The New Copyright Act, or How to Get into a Heap of Trouble Without Really Trying

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2022

Nicholas Henry
Nicholas Henry*
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
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Extract

On January 1st, 1978, a new Copyright Act will go into effect. It is the first revision of copyright law since 1909.

Copyright is perhaps the oldest public policy extant in America. Indeed, its origins can be traced back to colonial times prior to the adoption of the Constitution in 1787. By that year, only Delaware of the original thirteen colonies had failed to establish its own copyright law. When the Constitution was adopted, Article 1, Section 8 (which likely was penned by James Madison, a person with substantial intellectual interests), stated that “Congress shall have the 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 their Discoveries.” In 1790, Congress passed the first national Copyright Act.

Type
Research Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , Winter 1977 , pp. 6 - 9
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1977

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References

1 For an extended discussion of the new Copyright Act and a study of the evolution of the revision process since the early 1930's, the reader is referred to Henry, Nicholas, Copyright-Public Policies, Volume I of Copyright/Information Technology/Public Policy (New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc., 1975)Google Scholar and Henry, Nicholas, Public Policies-Information Technology, Volume II of Copyright/Information Technology/Public Policy (New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc., 1976).Google Scholar

The references to Lowi and Dror are: Lowi, Theodore J., “Population Policies and the American Political System” in Political Science in Population Studies, Clinton, Richard L., Flash, William S., and Godwin, R. Kenneth, eds. (Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath, 1972), pp. 25–53 Google Scholar, and Dror, Yehezkel, Public Policymaking Reexamined (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, 1968), p. 8.Google Scholar

2 Cohen, Richard E., “Writing New Rules on Copyright in a World of Technological Change,” National Journal (September 11, 1976), p. 1287.Google Scholar

3 Barbara Ringer, Draft of Chapter 12, “Federal Pre-emption and Duration of Copyright,” Second Supplementary Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law, 1975 Revision Bill, October, 1975 (mimeo), p. 4.

4 U.S. Congress. Senate, Committee on the Judiciary. Report No. 94–473 To Accompany S.22, Copyright Law Revision, 94th Cong., 1st Sess. (November 20, 1975), Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, p. 3.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid., p. 99.

7 For a discussion of how copyright affects computer usage for political scientists the reader is referred to Henry, Nicholas, “Political Scientists and Public Policy Affecting Computer Based Research,” PS, VII (Fall 1974), pp. 377–381.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A more complete relating of the computer and research issue is found in Henry, , Copyright-Public Policies, (Volume I), op. cit., pp. 70–76 Google Scholar, and Public Policies-Information Technology, (Volume II), op. cit., pp. 111–116.

8 For a discussion of how the Vanderbilt University Television News Archive pertains to public policy, the reader is referred to Pride, Richard A., “The Medium versus the Message: The Issue of Access to TV News,” PS, IX (Summer, 1976), pp. 270–273 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Robert G. Hummerstone, “Comments by CBS,” in ibid., pp. 274–275.

9 Senate Report No. 94–473, op. cit., p. 73.

10 The latest official statement by the American Political Science Association on reprint permissions is contained in “Advisory Opinion No. 3, Revised May 17, 1975, PS, VIII (Summer, 1975), p. 318. The latest report on the progress being made by the Committee on Ethics and Academic Freedom as it concerns reprint rights can be found in Jacobson, Robert L., “Scholars Seek Protection from Publishing ‘Pirates’,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, XIII (September 13, 1976), p. 7.Google Scholar

11 Ringer, Barbara, “The Demonology of Copyright” (The 1974 Bowker Memorial Lecture), reprinted in Publishers' Weekly, 200 (November 18, 1974), p. 26.Google Scholar