The Purposes of Copyright Law and “Anti-Copyright” Arguments

November 19, 2012 · · 16 comments

A lot of ink has been spilled over the years over copyright. Many of the arguments against copyright, however, start to sound the same; trotted out again and again no matter how often they are debunked.

Case in point — the following is testimony from Irwin Karp, in his capacity as general counsel of the Authors League of America, during a hearing on copyright law revisions for what would become the Copyright Act of 1976, nearly 40 years ago.

Karp, who passed in 2006, “was a tireless advocate for author’s rights and remembered by many for his work on the 1976 Copyright Revision Act and on the Berne Convention.” Here, he is testifying specifically about “sections 107 and 108 of the Copyright Revision Bill and the issue of ‘library photocopying’”, but his remarks are just as applicable to broader issues. Karp lays out the purposes of copyright law — including its important free speech function — and then moves on to tackle the most popular “anti-copyright” arguments — copyright is a “monopoly”, it restricts access to knowledge, it is merely a government “privilege”. It’s telling that in the past thirty-five years, copyright skeptics have done little to move beyond these arguments.

As the Supreme Court has explained, the Copyright Clause of the Constitution was intended to establish independent, entrepreneurial, self-sustaining authorship and publishing as the means of serving the public interest in securing the production of valuable literary and scientific works. In so doing, the Copyright Clause serves a second purpose — it implements the First Amendment’s freedoms to express and publish ideas, information, opinions and all manner of literary, scientific and artistic works. The First Amendment protects against restraints on these freedoms. But the Copyright Clause is the only constitutional provision which establishes a legal-economic foundation for exercising them. The Copyright Clause thus frees authors from the need for subsidization by the state or other powerful, institutional “patrons”, and from the restraints such support often imposes. And it was intended to sustain the existence of a diversity of independent publishers, who would give a wide range of viewpoints access to the market place of ideas.

The Supreme Court has emphasized that the Copyright Clause of the Constitution

“was intended to grant valuable, enforceable rights to authors, publishers, etc. without burdensome requirements; ‘to afford greater encouragement to the production of literary [or artistic] works of lasting benefit to the world.’”

The Court said that the “economic philosophy” underlying the Copyright Clause

“is the conviction that the encouragement of individual efforts by personal gain is the best way to advance public welfare through the talents of authors . . .” {Mazer v. Stein, 347 U.S. 201, 219)

Thus, the instrument chosen by the Constitution to serve the public interest, i.e., the securing of literary and scientific works of lasting value — is an inde- pendent, entrepreneurial property-rights system of writing and publishing. The Copyright Act establishes the rights which prevent others from depriving authors and publishers of the fruits of their labor. But it does not guarantee a fair reward, or any reward. For authors and publishers, both commercial and non-profit, must depend on income derived from uses of their books and journals to compensate for the talent, labor and money expended in creating them, and provide working capital for further publications. And as entrepreneurs, they must assume the ever-present risk that books and journals produced by substantial labor and cash outlays will fail financially although they make valuable intellectual contributions to the public interest.

We urge that Congress should not disrupt the delicate balance of this essential system. Carving exemptions out of the “enforceable rights” of authors and publishers does not serve the public interest. For although the resulting uncompensated uses may further the convenience or ambitious plans of some “user” group, they diminish or destroy the ability of authors and publishers to serve the ultimate public interest — to continue producing new works of lasting benefit. The publication of scientific and technical journals, for example, richly serves the public interest — but it is at best a marginal economic operation. Learned societies and others who publish them do not grow fat on their profits. Squeezed by ever-increasing costs and static circulations, publishers will be forced to close down some journals or not start new ones if they are denied reasonable compensation for uses of their articles in the new medium of systematic, library one-at-a-time reproduction. Periodicals and journals are neither immortal nor immune from the laws of economics. The process of attrition may not be apparent to library spokesmen, but it is nonetheless inevitable. Yet, while they are willing to make substantial payments to the Xerox Corporation, suppliers and library employees to provide users with hundreds of thousands of copies of copyrighted articles, they demand of Congress the privilege of denying the journal’s publishers any compensation. [Ironically, libraries pay the Xerox Corporation a per-page fee — a royalty, if you will — for each page of each article they reproduce].

THE ANTI-COPYRIGHT ARGUMENTS

It has become ritual for library organization and Ad Hoc Committee spokesmen to accompany their demands for new exemptions with a series of attacks on copyright, calculated to suggest that the author has no legitimate claim to reasonable protection for the work he creates.

THE “ANTITRUST ARGUMENT”

Library and Ad Hoc Committee spokesmen charge that a copyright is a “monopoly”, suggesting it offends the Sherman Act. This is not so. The copyright in a book is not a “monopoly” in the antitrust sense. It does not give the author control over the market in books, or the business of publishing them. His book must compete in the market place with the 40,000 other titles published that year and the hundreds of thousands still in print from prior years, including many that deal with the same subject. His copyright only gives him certain rights to use the book he created. The owner of a copyright only has a “monopoly” in the innocuous sense that all property owners do — each owns a collection of rights, granted by law, to use that which he has created, purchased or inherited.

THE “RESTRAINT OF INFORMATION” ARGUMENT

Library and Ad Hoc Committee spokesmen charge that a copyright places a restraint on information. This is not so. A patent prevents others from using the ideas it protects. A copyright does not impose such restraints. Anyone is free to use the ideas, facts or information presented in a copyrighted book or article. The copyright only protects the author’s expression, not the ideas, facts or information. Other writers can draw on them. Other writers are free to independently create similar (indeed closely similar) works; the copyright only prevents substantial copying of the author’s expression.

In Progress and Poverty, Henry George made this trenchant observation about copyright :

“Copyright . . . does not prevent any one from using for himself the facts, the knowledge, the laws or combinations for a similar production, but only from using the identical form of the particular book or other production — the actual labor which has in short been expended in producing it. It rests therefore upon the natural, moral right of each one to enjoy the products of his own exertion, and involves no interference with the similar right of any one else to do likewise . . .”

The Copyright is therefore in accordance with the moral law — (p. 411)

THE “MERE PRIVILEGE” ARGUMENT

To Library and Ad Hoc Committee spokesmen, it smacks of immorality to suggest that the author has a moral claim to copyright protection in a work that he created, that would not have existed but for his talent, labor and creative efforts. They charge that copyright is not “property” because the rights are created by statute, and that Congress is not required to pass copyright laws since Art. I, Sec. 8 “merely” says that it “shall have the power” to do so. But the phrase “Congress shall have the power” does not precede the copyright clause of Sec. 8 — it prefaces the enumeration of all powers granted to Congress, including the powers to collect taxes, borrow money, raise armies and regulate commerce. Obviously Sec. 8 intended that Congress would enact copyright laws as well as exercise these other vital functions.

Of course a copyright is property. Like all other property, it is “a creature and creation of law . . .” (73 C.J.S. Sec. 1, p. 145). Like all property, it is a bundle of rights granted by the state, through legislation or court decision Copyright is hardly the only form of property created by statute. Property rights in billions of dollars worth of land, minerals and other natural resources have been created by acts of Congress.

But there is one basic distinction. These other statutes grant individuals perpetual, exclusive rights in resources that belonged to the Nation; they take property from the public domain and give it to private citizens. The Copyright Act grants the author rights in something he created and that already belonged to him at common law; and within a short time, the Act takes his creation from him or his heirs and places it in the public domain. Henry George was right in saying the author’s claim to adequate copyright protection rests on “natural, moral right”. The common law recognized that right, holding that an author “has an absolute property right in his production which he could not be deprived of so long as it remained unpublished, nor could he be compelled to publish it.” (Ferris v. Frohman). And as the Register noted, these exclusive common law rights “continue with no limit even though the work is used commercially and widely disseminated.”

Library and Ad Hoc Committee spokesmen have not asked Congress to grant them an exemption from the property rights of the Xerox Corporation which would permit them to use its machines without charge to reproduce “single copies” of journal articles or other copyrighted works. Property rights in machinery is something that apparently wins their respect. But the copyright owner’s right to compensation for systematic library reproduction stands on equally firm moral and legal footing. And his contribution to the libraries’ copying operations is indispensable. Unless the American Chemical Society and other publishers can afford to continue producing their journals, the Xerox machines and libraries will not have articles to reproduce.

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Friday’s Endnotes – 11/09/12

November 09, 2012 · · 1 comment

An invitation to free internet advocates to join us — Following the sentencing of two Vietnamese songwriters for “spreading propaganda against the state” through their songs, the Copyright Alliance has urged others to call for their release. “We encourage artists and creators, as well as anyone who has shared a link, signed a petition, or blacked out a website in support of internet freedom, to exercise your right to free speech and share the plight of Vo Minh Tri and Tran Vu Anh Binh with your friends, your community and your elected officials.”

Going Memeless – Do civil rights abuses have to be hip to get attention? — This is the question posed by David Newhoff regarding the above convictions. “Almost every day, I encounter some proclamation that democratic governments are trying to stifle free speech, and the claim usually comes from some middle-class American or European whose rights are more than intact.  But it really does seem that when we have clear evidence of exactly this kind of oppression, there has to be a hook before it can get much attention.”

I Loved the Whole ‘Information Is Free’ Thing. Until It Was My Book Getting Stolen… — Duke professer Dan Ariely discusses his personal conversion of his views on illegal downloading.

Maintaining Transparency — In response to concerns raised over the methodology of the Copyright Alert System’s process for identifying alleged infringement over p2p networks, the Center for Copyright Infringement, responsible for implementing the System, has released a copy of the independent expert report assessing its system.

Sorry, Internet, SOPA had zero effect on election day results — Digital Trends’ Andrew Couts reports that “Blockage of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) may have served as the Web’s defining political moment of the year, but the anti-SOPA movement appears to have had little to no effect on Congressional elections, with 21 out of 24 SOPA supporters hanging on to their seats.”

Workspace: Cherry Chevapravatdumrong — Screenwriter John August has a wonderful recurring series on how and where other screenwriters get their jobs done. Here, he talks with Family Guy writer Cherry Chevapravatdumrong, who confesses “I’m fine if there’s an actual deadline, I can totally kick it into high gear then, but if there isn’t one staring me right in the face, yikes. This is probably also a problem with writing at home most of the time…it’s so easy to be like ‘Oh, there’s the TV.’ ‘Oh, there’s the kitchen where the snacks live.’ ‘Oh wow, what if I turned on some music and had a one-woman dance party for the next hour?’”

Inside the Music of ‘Nashville’ — I’ve been watching ABC’s new drama Nashville since it premiered and have been pleasantly surprised (Connie Britton, what more could you want?) Rolling Stone looks behind the scenes at Nashville‘s music, a major component of the show, guided by the more than capable hands of executive music producer T Bone Burnett.

NAACP calls Pandora-backed legislation unfair — According to CNet’s Greg Sandoval, “In a letter to Congress, the civil rights group asks that lawmakers vote no on legislation designed to cut the rates paid by Pandora and other Webcasters to artists — some of whom are elderly Motown performers who weren’t compensated fairly for their original work.”

Megaupload Faces Mega Problems Before Relaunch — Kim Dotcom wants you to keep paying attention to him.

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Friday’s Endnotes – 08/24/12

August 24, 2012 · · 2 comments

Real cost of ‘free’ downloads — Ken Paulson, president and CEO of the First Amendment Center, pens this must read op-ed on copyright and free speech, just in time for the 225th annivesary of the drafting of the US Copyright Clause (September 5th). “In the end, this is not about business models or emerging technology. It’s about living up to the promise we made to Webster and the first generation of Americans who believed that art should be free, but not necessarily free of charge.”

“Legitimate” piracy — John Degen takes a trip down the “freecult logical vortex for legitimizing piracy.” “If you, the professional content creator, are stupid enough to actually create valuable content and even think about putting it near the Internet, you are inviting piracy. And if you think technological protection measures (TPMs) will protect the value of your valuable content, you’re even more stupid. If you think the law should address your problem, you’re some kind of freedom-hating corporate monster. Also, stupid.”

Pro-Music’s Global Guide To Music Services — Eliot Van Buskirk of Evolver.fm presents a list of legitimate music services, categorized by country, from Pro-Music.org. The list is long, but certainly not exhaustive — music listeners have tons of other ways to legally enjoy music online, more than any other time in history.

Survey on Digital Content Usage 2012: Sanctions and warnings regarding copyright infringements are gaining acceptance among the public — The IFPI presents a report that showcases the attitudes and behaviors of German consumers regarding online media. Some of the key findings, according to the IFPI: “Three of every four Germans believe it is appropriate to fine people who offer copyrighted media content online without permission. More than half the population (53 percent) endorses the imposition of fines on people who illegally download media content. Consumers feel that warnings would have a preventive effect: 57 percent of Germans believe that up- and downloaders would discontinue their copyright-infringing activities upon receiving a warning from the provider.”

Piracy and Internet Search – The Debate — Along the same lines, researcher Brett Danaher wonders what the effect of Google’s recent move to downgrade search ranking based on takedown notices will have. Danaher notes that his previous research has shown that ”laws aimed at deterring consumers from filesharing can increase music sales” and “shutting down a major cyberlocker increased movie sales,” but the effect of Google’s new policy remains to be seen.

The Andersen P2P file sharing study on the purchase of music CDs in Canada — One of the few studies that concluded that filesharing helps, rather than hurts, recorded music sales again faces fundamental questions. As Barry Sookman reports, the 2007 paper’s key conclusion that filesharing leads to higher music sales had previously been revised by the author, dropping the claim. This week, a new paper, re-examining the same data as the original paper, reports the exact opposite conclusion, and notes the original and revised papers are “fundamentally flawed.” The new paper, by Australian economist Prof. George Barker “consistently [found] a negative and statistically significant partial correlation between CD purchases and P2P downloads.”

RapidShare: We’ll help Hollywood, but ‘not at all costs’ (Q&A) — Declan McCullagh of CNet interviews RapidShare general counsel Daniel Raimer. Though there is still a ton of infringing content available on the service, it is encouraging to see the company express interest in mitigating that. Says Raimer, “We believe it’s a much more interesting market to have the legitimate customers upload important files that they want to have for long periods of time — a reliable cloud computing service that they can trust. These are the types of customers we want. Legitimate customers don’t really want to argue whether your service costs $4.99 a month or $50 a year. Copyright pirates are different. They really want everything for free. They’re definitely not the long-time customers.”

A Commendable Response from Zedo — On Tuesday, Chris Castle discovered that ad platform Zedo was serving ads on several notable torrent sites. By Wednesday, the company responded with a promise to make sure it doesn’t happen in the future. Kudos to Zedo. But as Castle notes, “This exchange highlights the most important aspect of the collision of legitimate companies with the seedy underbelly of the Internet–it’s not enough to sit back and wait for someone to formally notify you when things are going wrong.”

David Lowery to host SXSW panel on music piracy? — Adland reports that David Lowery has submitted a proposal for a panel on an “Innovative, Open, Ethical & Sustainable Internet” for this year’s SXSW. If this sounds interesting, follow the link in the article to the panel picker to vote it up — voting ends August 31.

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Friday’s Endnotes – 06/08/12

June 08, 2012 · · 1 comment

‘South Park’ Wins ‘What What (in the Butt)’ Legal Fight — The Seventh Circuit affirmed a lower court’s ruling that a South Park parody of the viral video “What What (in the Butt)” was fair use. What’s notable here is that the ruling was made on a motion to dismiss, before any discovery had commenced. The court’s ruling could lower the risk of litigation for legitimate fair users.

Getting Paid is a Moral Right, too! Why Creative Commons Gets it Wrong — The 1709 Blog presents this compelling look at Creative Commons licensing from legal scholar Dr. Mira T. Sundara Rajan. “In the United States, artists who want moral rights can opt for licensing their work through Creative Commons, but (unless they choose to license only a few select works to benefit from ‘free advertising’), they cannot expect to enjoy moral rights protection and earn money from their work at the same time. Welcome to the future?”

Scenes From The Pounding Heart Of A Tech Bubble — Buzzfeed’s Jack Stuef paints a picture of TechCrunch Disrupt NYC, New York City’s largest startup conference, that is bustling with absurdity. “‘We’re the original tech vertical,’ he said, then paused. ‘It’s an ironic thing because it is disruptive,’ he continued, staring unblinkingly into my eyes. I still don’t know what that meant.”

Artists, Know Thy Enemy – Who’s Ripping You Off and How… — Another great post from The Trichordist: “Let’s be clear about this, our battle is with businesses ripping us off by illegally exploiting our work for profit. This is not about our fans. It is about commercial companies in the businesses of profiting from our work, paying us nothing and then telling us to blame our fans.”

B&N: DOJ e-book suit endangers consumers, bookstores and copyrighted expression — Barnes and Noble weighs in on the Fed’s anti-trust suit involving e-books. According to PaidContent, “B&N argues that the proposed settlement is a government action ‘analogous to a cartel imposing a detailed business model on publishers.’ It would transform the DOJ ‘into a regulator’ and would ‘injure innocent third parties, including Barnes & Noble, independent bookstores, authors, and non-defendant publishers; hurt competition in an emerging industry; and ultimately harm consumers.’”

BitTorrent Admin Jailed For Tax Evasion On Site Donations — “The former administrator of the PowerBits private tracker was found guilty of copyright infringement and tax and accounting fraud after he failed to register donations provided by the site’s users as income with the tax authorities. He will serve one year in prison.” Perhaps Sweden needs to innovate instead of relying on its outdated business model of “collecting taxes.”

Guest Post: Is Copyright a threat to Free Speech? by David Newhoff — Filmmaker Newhoff provides this provocative article arguing that, rather than clashing, copyright and free speech complement each other. “If the U.S. is founded on one idea above all others, it’s that there is a link between free enterprise and freedom itself. Yes, this ideology has its flaws, and we’re still living through the economic woes of certain kinds of enterprise run amok; but let’s not throw out the baby with the bankers just yet.”

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Copyright and the First Amendment: The Unexplored, Unbroken Historical Practice, Part 5

April 16, 2012 · · Comments Off

In this series, I’ve been looking at the historical record to attempt to explain why the idea that there is tension between copyright law and the First Amendment took so long to appear — it was nearly two centuries after the Copyright Act of 1790 and the Bill of Rights were passed that the first legal journal articles appeared raising the question, and it wouldn’t be until 2003, in Eldred v. Ashcroft, that the US Supreme Court confronted the issue directly. (Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4).

The point of this examination is not to advance any arguments about these claims, but rather to add to the debate. As the Court noted in Eldred, “a page of history is worth a volume of logic.” It’s not as if no one was concerned with free speech before the 1960s.

Today, I want to look at copyright law’s distinction between ideas and expression. The doctrine was present in the early days of copyright, and the modern day view that it serves as a First Amendment accommodation seems consistent with historical views on the scope of the freedom of speech and the press.

The Idea Expression Distinction as a First Amendment Accommodation

The idea that copyright’s distinction between idea and expression can serve to resolve any tension with the First Amendment was first articulated by Melville Nimmer in 1970.1 To Nimmer, distinguishing between idea and expression to protect free speech interests in copyright cases served as a “definitional balance” — a methodology developed largely by Nimmer.2

The Supreme Court endorsed Nimmer’s view in Harper & Row Publishers v. Nation Enterprises. In the 1985 case, it said, “The Second Circuit noted, correctly, that copyright’s idea/expression dichotomy “strike[s] a definitional balance between the First Amendment and the Copyright Act by permitting free communication of facts while still protecting an author’s expression.” Eldred v. Ashcroft enshrined the doctrine as US law in 2003, calling the idea/expression distinction one of copyright law’s “built-in First Amendment accommodations.”

Nimmer premised the idea of the idea/expression distinction as a First Amendment accommodation on logic, but does it have any historical support? Because there is so little in the historical record of the relationship between copyright law and freedom of speech, it shouldn’t be surprising that there is no express evidence that anyone thought in Nimmer’s terms before his article. However, I think there is implicit evidence that, had the question been put to pre-20th century legal thinkers, they would likely accept Nimmer’s definitional balance.

Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Opinion

You can write books about the development of the freedom of speech, but for this discussion, it’s helpful to describe one of the dominant progressions of the concept during the 18th century.

The right to freedom of speech owes much of its existence to the liberty of the press. The liberty of the press resulted from the expiration of England’s Licensing Act in 1694. In the following decades, it was widely understood that government had no right to license the press; but what else the liberty of the press encompassed would be the subject of debate throughout the 18th century.

William Blackstone describes the conservative view in his Commentaries on the Laws of England:

The liberty of the press is indeed essential to the nature of a free state: but this consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published. Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public: to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press: but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous, or illegal, he must take the consequence of his own temerity. To subject the press to the restrictive power of a licenser, as was formerly done, both before and since the revolution, is to subject all freedom of sentiment to the prejudices of one man, and make him the arbitrary and infallible judge of all controverted points in learning, religion, and government. But to punish (as the law does at present) any dangerous or offensive writings, which, when published, shall on a fair and impartial trial be adjudged of a pernicious tendency, is necessary for the preservation of peace and good order, of government and religion, the only solid foundations of civil liberty. Thus the will of individuals is still left free; the abuse only of that free will is the object of legal punishment. Neither is any restraint hereby laid upon freedom of thought or enquiry: liberty of private sentiment is still left; the disseminating, or making public, of bad sentiments, destructive of the ends of society, is the crime which society corrects.

A 2002 paper by Jeremy Ofseyer is particularly illuminating as one way to understand the backdrop of the 18th century experience that eventually led to the First Amendment. Ofseyer says:

England, like many other countries, had long enforced orthodoxy in matters of opinion. It did so in order to save the souls of heretics and out of fear that heterodoxy frays the social fabric and invites anarchy. According to this intolerant view, unorthodox opinions are not only false and offensive, but also inherently dangerous because they undermine established institutions and norms. Blackstone catalogued two main categories of opinion bans: offenses against God and religion and offenses against crown or government.3

Ofseyer notes that American liberal thinkers of the time, particularly Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, sharply disagreed with this view of the law as Blackstone described it:

Diversity of opinion is … the healthy product of freedom of thought and speech: “In every country where man is free to think and to speak, differences of opinion will arise from difference of perception, and the imperfection of reason  … .” For these reasons, Jefferson concluded that “the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction.”

According to Madison, there is a fundamental human property right to one’s “opinions and the free communication of them.” From this distinct, property-based premise, along with other premises akin to Jefferson’s, he reached the same conclusion: “Opinions are not the objects of legislation.”

Jefferson and Madison’s views were obviously not unanimously held at the time — before the 18th century was out, the U.S. Congress would pass the Alien and Sedition Acts, making it a crime to print or utter “any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States.” The Acts were very controversial at the time, and much of the debate was between proponents of the Blackstonian conception of the freedom of the press which permitted regulation of opinions and the liberal view that freedom of the press immunized liability for opinions.4

The Idea-Expression Distinction in Copyright’s Early Days

One of the fundamental doctrines of copyright law, the idea-expression distinction limits copyright protection to the specific expression of a creator, leaving the ideas embodied in that expression free for all to use. The 1879 Supreme Court case Baker v. Selden is often cited as the earliest articulation of the idea expression distinction, but that is not exactly true.

The earliest discussions on the nature of copyright included a distinction between ideas — which remain free to the public — and expression — which is susceptible to protection by copyright. Discussions like these began in earnest after the passage of the Statute of Anne in England in 1710, and, though these same discussions continue to this day, toward the end of the 18th century, “all the essential elements of modern Anglo-American copyright law were in place.”5

These essential elements include the idea-express distinction. Wrote English author and churchman William Warburton in 1762:

[H]e who obtaineth my copy may appropriate my stock of ideas, and, by opposing my sentiments, may give birth to a new doctrine or he may coincide with my notions, and, by employing different illustrations, may place my doctrine in another point of view : and either case he acquireth an exclusive title to his copy, without invading my property.6

Noted English jurist William Blackstone wrote of the doctrine in 1766. Blackstone used the term “sentiment” for “ideas” and “language” for “expression”.

Now the identity of a literary composition consists intirely in the sentiment and the language; the same conceptions, cloathed in the same words, must necessarily be the same composition: and whatever method be taken of conveying that composition to the ear or the eye of another, by recital, by writing, or by printing, in any number of copies or at any period of time, it is always the identical work of the author which is so conveyed; and no other man can have a right to convey or transfer it without his consent, either tacitly or expressly given.7

English lawyer Francis Hargrave wrote in his seminal treatise An Argument in Defence of Literary Property (1774), “the use of ideas and knowledge is as common as it would be, if the right of printing was not appropriated.”

In Germany, philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte published Proof of the Illegality of Reprinting in 1793, which made a distinction between the material aspect of a book and the ideational aspect:

This ideational aspect is in turn divisible into a material aspect, the content of the book, the ideas it presents; and the form of these ideas, the way in which, the combination in which, the phrasing and wording in which they are presented.

…[T]he content of the book … can be the common property of many, and in such a manner that each can possess it entirely, clearly ceases upon the publication of a book to be the exclusive property of its first proprietor (if indeed it was so prior to publication, which is not always the case with some books nowadays), but does continue to be his property in common with many others. What, on the other hand, can absolutely never be appropriated by anyone else, because this is physically impossible, is the form of the ideas, the combination in which, and the signs through which they are presented.

It is clear that by the time the United States became independent of England and formed its own government, a distinction between ideas and expression was established in copyright law.

Freedom of Ideas, Protection of Expression

The distinction between ideas and expression in copyright law was recognized early on. At the same time, freedom of speech and the press was seen as vital to the protection of opinion and the dissemination of ideas and facts. The notion that the idea/expression distinction ensures copyright law’s compatibility with the First Amendment’s prohibition on laws infringing free speech would thus appear wholly consistent with historical conceptions of these freedoms and the law. Copyright does not bar the “free communication of” ideas, nor does it punish anyone for disseminating “bad sentiments.”

We can turn to James Madison for indirect evidence of this consistency. Madison, after all, proposed that the federal Congress should have the power to secure copyrights during the Constitutional Convention. Years before that, he sat on the Continental Congress committee that encouraged the States to pass their own copyright legislation and penned Virginia’s subsequently passed copyright act. Few of the Founding Fathers could claim more responsibility for Congress’s authority to make copyright law.

James Madison also was the first to introduce a Bill of Rights to amend the Constitution, although he had originally opposed the idea. What’s interesting is the language he chose regarding the freedom of speech. Madison’s amendment that would eventually become part of the First Amendment said, “The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments” (emphasis added).

Note that this is the same language used by William Blackstone when he described copyright, saying the “identity of a literary composition consists intirely in the sentiment and the language.”

William Blackstone was one of the most influential legal scholars to the Founding Fathers, Madison included.8 And its possible the same language was a conscious choice. Bilder notes that Madison’s life showed a devotion to “the problem of language.” “He copied cases in which the presence of one word mattered.” His legal notes reveal questions that fascinated Madison, like “What did particular words mean?”

Madison cared about perspicuity. In one sense, he was not unusual in this regard, for perspicuity occupied the minds of late eighteenth-century rhetoricians. The word reappears in letters written during the Philadelphia Convention and his later correspondence. In Federalist 37, Madison famously wrote, “Perspicuity therefore requires not only that the ideas should be distinctly formed, but that they should be expressed by words distinctly and exclusively appropriated to them.”

This isn’t definitive evidence, of course. But it does support the idea that, had Madison and other Founding Fathers been confronted with the question of whether copyright law conflicts with the First Amendment, they would have accepted the Supreme Court’s holding that the First Amendment is accomodated by copyright law’s idea/expression distinction.

Footnotes

  1. Does Copyright Abridge the First Amendment Guarantees of Free Speech and Press?, 17 UCLA Law Review 1180. [↩]
  2. Norman T. Deutsch, Professor Nimmer Meets Professor Schauer (and others): An Analysis of “Definitional Balancing” as a Methodology for Determining the “Visible Boundaries of the First Amendment”, 39 Akron Law Review 483, 484 (2006). [↩]
  3. Speech or Opinion? Two Objects of First Amendment Immunity, 2 Utah Law Review 843, 869-70. [↩]
  4. Compare Henry Lee, Report of the Minority on the Virginia Resolutions and James Madison, Virginia Resolutions. [↩]
  5. Mark Rose, Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright (1993). [↩]
  6. An enquiry into the nature and origin of literary property. [↩]
  7. Commentaries 2:406. [↩]
  8. Mary Sarah Bilder, James Madison, Law Student and Demi-Lawyer, 28 Law and History Review 389, 399 (2010). [↩]
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Copyright and the First Amendment: The Unexplored, Unbroken Historical Practice, Part 4

January 02, 2012 · · 66 comments

Does copyright conflict with free speech? The idea that it does has gained a lot of traction recently. Yet arguments of a conflict between copyright law and the First Amendment in the United States are relatively new — understanding why the two co-existed for nearly two centuries before these arguments began to appear should prove valuable to current scholarship.

In previous posts, I outlined several explanations for this lack of conflict based on historical documents and court decisions. Copyright laws were passed by the States after provisions for freedom of speech and the press were enshrined in law, indicating that the two were viewed as compatible. At that time, Liberty of the press was defined primarily as an absence of government licensing — even under broader definitions, protecting an author’s copyright was not viewed as offensive to a free press. In part, this was because copyright was conceived as a property right, and liberty does not extend to invasions of other’s rights.

Today I want to present perhaps one of the most important reasons copyright has historically escaped free speech scrutiny.

During their formative years, the liberty of the press and recognition of copyright were seen as means to an end. They shared the same goal — the advancement of knowledge, the arts, and sciences. And they were viewed as complementary, rather than conflicting, means to reach this goal.

Freedom of the Press Goals and Purpose

During the 18th century, at a minimum, the freedom of the press meant an absence of prior restraints on publishing — whether through government licensing or censorship. Noted jurist William Blackstone, who ensconced this minimalist definition of press liberty in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, described the aversion to previous restraints: “To subject the press to the restrictive power of a licenser, as was formerly done, both before and since the revolution, is to subject all freedom of sentiment to the prejudices of one man, and make him the arbitrary and infallible judge of all controverted points in learning, religion, and government.”

The Founding Fathers viewed the liberty of the press as promoting broader goals then this. In a 1774 Letter to the Inhabitants of the Province of Quebec, the First Continental Congress wrote:

The last right we shall mention, regards the freedom of the press. The importance of this consists, besides the advancement of truth, science, morality, and arts in general, in its diffusion of liberal sentiments on the administration of Government, its ready communication of thoughts between subjects, and its consequential promotion of union among them, whereby oppressive officers are shamed or intimidated, into more honourable and just modes of conducting affairs.

To the Continental Congress, the primary purpose of press liberty was political: a democratic government needs to be openly examined to function. But note the secondary purpose: “the advancement of truth, science, morality, and arts in general.” This is strikingly similar to the later constitutional purpose given for Congress’s copyright authority: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.”

A Free Press Promotes Knowledge

There are other examples from the 18th and 19th centuries of those who believed one of the purposes of free speech was to encourage knowledge.

The Cato Letters, a series of newspaper articles published in England in the 1720s that served as ideological inspiration for the Founding Fathers, included this oft-quoted passage on the freedom of speech: “Freedom of speech is the great bulwark of liberty; they prosper and die together: And it is the terror of traitors and oppressors, and a barrier against them. It produces excellent writers, and encourages men of fine genius.”

In his preface to the 1738 edition of Milton’s Areopagitica, poet James Thomson1 writes about the importance of this goal of a free press to society:

What is it that distinguishes human Society from a brutish herd, but the flourishing of the Arts and Sciences; the free Exercise of Wit and Reason? What can Government mean, intend, or produce, that is worthy of Man, or beneficial to him, as he is a rational creature, besides Wisdom, Knowlege, Virtue and Science? Is it merely indeed that we may eat, drink, sleep, sing and dance with security that we choose Governours, subject our selves to their administration, and pay taxes? Take away the Arts, Religion, Knowlege, Virtue, (all of which must flourish, or sink together) and in the Name of Goodness, what is left to us that is worth enjoying or protecting? Yet take away the Liberty of the Press, and we are all at once stript of the use of our noblest Faculties: our Souls themselves are imprisoned in a dark dungeon: we may breathe, but we cannot be said to live.

Liberty of the press, as Milton argued for in what is considered one of the “most influential and impassioned philosophical defences” of the principle — here, taking the form of an absence of government licensing or censorship — is a prerequisite to the progress of knowledge, art, and science. Thomson was not alone in this sentiment.

Elsewhere, a London magazine from 1820 described the goal of the liberty of the press like this: “To promote the diffusion of knowledge, to elicit the fruits of genius, to facilitate and to encourage the general interchange of minds and of hearts”

And the first issue of the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, published in 1834, included a brief article on newspapers, where it was writeen, “The progress of society has been onward, wherever there has been a free press maintained and encouraged. It has chased away much darkness from the civilized parts of the world, and spread light and knowledge in our path.”

Copyright Promotes Knowledge

The copyright statutes passed in the States prior to the drafting of the Constitution use similar language. The acts were passed with the purpose of “the encouragement of literature and genius” and the goal of, for example, “the improvement of knowledge, the progress of civilisation, and the advancement of human happiness.” The means of implementing this purpose to reach the goal was the securing of legal rights to “men of learning who devote their time and talents” to literature and genius.2

The impetus for these laws came in part from the efforts of authors like Joel Barlow. In 1783, he wrote the Continental Congress in favor of a copyright law. The famous poet and drafter of the Treaty of Tripoli told the Congress, “As we have few Gentlemen of fortune sufficient to enable them to spend a whole life in study, or enduce others to do it by their patronage, it is more necessary, in this country than in any other, that the rights of authors should be secured by law.”

Barlow’s letter encapsulated the reasoning behind the idea of copyright as an incentive to promote knowledge: literary and intellectual works took a considerable amount of time and resources to produce, and given the great public benefits that flow from them, some way of encouraging people to devote their time and resources to producing them was needed.

You can see this idea adopted and explained by others throughout the 19th century. In his famous speech to the English House of Commons in 1841, Thomas Babington Macaulay said:

The advantages arising from a system of copyright are obvious. It is desirable that we should have a supply of good books; we cannot have such a supply unless men of letters are liberally remunerated; and the least objectionable way of remunerating them is by means of copyright. You cannot depend for literary instruction and amusement on the leisure of men occupied in the pursuits of active life. Such men may occasionally produce compositions of great merit. But you must not look to such men for works which require deep meditation and long research. Works of that kind you can expect only from persons who make literature the business of their lives. Of these persons few will be found among the rich and the noble. The rich and the noble are not impelled to intellectual exertion by necessity. They may be impelled to intellectual exertion by the desire of distinguishing themselves, or by the desire of benefiting the community. But it is generally within these walls that they seek to signalise themselves and to serve their fellow-creatures. Both their ambition and their public spirit, in a country like this, naturally take a political turn. It is then on men whose profession is literature, and whose private means are not ample, that you must rely for a supply of valuable books. Such men must be remunerated for their literary labour. And there are only two ways in which they can be remunerated. One of those ways is patronage; the other is copyright.

In 1853, Charles Bishop Goodrich published The Science of Government: As Exhibited in the Institutions of the United States, a popular early treatise on US government. His section on copyright takes the same view as Barlow and Macaulay:

Another power conferred upon congress was and is designed “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 discoveries.” … The propriety of the power, and of its enlarged and liberal exercise, cannot be doubted. Individuals cannot devote their time and lives to the attainment of extensive or important knowledge, unless they can derive some personal benefit from their labor. In every useful invention, in the production of useful writings, the public have as much, and frequently a greater interest than the individual inventor or writer can have. Every measure which can with propriety be adopted to enlarge and extend the progress of science and of the arts, is calculated to accomplish the elevation of the people, and must therefore be regarded as of the utmost importance. The effect of our system, and the encouragement which it affords to the promotion of knowledge, has been apparent. Much advancement has been made, in fact it may be regarded as characteristic, and may be said of the American people, that they are progressive, inventive, and suggestive, in all their operations.

Patronage

At this point, one might think that the shared goals of a free press and copyright are only coincidental: one could easily find references to other means of promoting knowledge at the time. For example, in his first State of the Union address, President George Washington told Congress, “There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of science and literature,” but left it to them to decide “Whether this desirable object will be best promoted by affording aids to seminaries of learning already established, by the institution of a national university, or by any other expedients.”

Yet as the ideas of a free press and copyright developed, the relationship between the two strenghthened. There was something specific about securing legal rights to authors so that they may profit off their writings that not only advanced the arts and sciences but also advanced the principles of a free press.

As noted above, Macaulay spoke about two ways to remunerate authors: patronage and copyright. He follows that with an explanation of why the latter is more preferable to a free society:

There have been times in which men of letters looked, not to the public, but to the government, or to a few great men, for the reward of their exertions. It was thus in the time of Maecenas and Pollio at Rome, of the Medici at Florence, of Louis the Fourteenth in France, of Lord Halifax and Lord Oxford in this country. Now, Sir, I well know that there are cases in which it is fit and graceful, nay, in which it is a sacred duty to reward the merits or to relieve the distresses of men of genius by the exercise of this species of liberality. But these cases are exceptions. I can conceive no system more fatal to the integrity and independence of literary men than one under which they should be taught to look for their daily bread to the favour of ministers and nobles. I can conceive no system more certain to turn those minds which are formed by nature to be the blessings and ornaments of our species into public scandals and pests.

Like Macaulay, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story tied the freedom of the press and copyright together. In an 1826 discourse, Story wrote:

One of the most striking characteristics of our age, and that, indeed, which has worked deepest in all the changes of its fortunes and pursuits, is the general diffusion of knowledge. This is emphatically the age of reading. In other times this was the privilege of the few; in ours, it is the possession of the many. Learning once constituted the accomplishment of those in the higher orders of society, who had no relish for active employment, and of those, whose monastic lives and religious profession sought to escape from the weariness of their common duties. Its progress may be said to have been gradually downwards from the higher to the’middle classes of society. It scarcely reached at all, in its joys or its sorrows, in its instructions or its fantasies, the home of the peasant and artisan. It now radiates in all directions; and exerts its central force more in the middle than in any other class of society. The means of education were formerly within the reach of few. It required wealth to accumulate knowledge. The possession of a library was no ordinary achievement. The learned leisure of a fellowship in some university seemed almost indispensable for any successful studies; and the patronage of princes and courtiers was the narrow avenue to public favor. I speak of a period at little more than the distance of two centuries; not of particular instances, but of the general cast and complexion of life.

The principal cause of this change is to be found in the freedom of the press, or rather in this, cooperating with the cheapness of the press. … The daily press first instructed men in their wants, and soon found, that the eagerness of curiosity outstripped the power of gratifying it. No man can now doubt the fact, that wherever the press is free, it will emancipate the people; wherever knowledge circulates unrestrained, it is no longer safe to oppress; wherever public opinion is enlightened, it nourishes an independent, masculine, and healthful spirit. If Faustus were now living, he might exclaim with all the enthusiasm of Archimedes, and with a far nearer approach to the truth, Give me, where I may place a free press, and I will shake the world.

One interesting effect, which owes its origin to this universal love and power of reading, is felt in the altered condition of authors themselves. They no longer depend upon the smiles of a favored few. The patronage of the great is no longer submissively entreated, or exultingly proclaimed. Their patrons are the public; their readers are the civilized world. They address themselves, not to the present generation alone, but aspire to instruct posterity. No blushing dedications seek an easy passport to fame, or flatter the perilous condescension of pride. No illuminated letters flourish on the silky page, asking admission to the courtly drawingroom. Authors are no longer the humble companions or dependents of the nobility: but they constitute the chosen ornaments of society, and are welcomed to the gay circles of fashion and the palaces of princes. Theirs is no longer an unthrifty vocation, closely allied to penury; but an elevated profession, maintaining its thousands in lucrative pursuits.

Copyright: a Critical Component of a Free Press

It would seem that Story and Macaulay’s view of copyright as an integral component of a free press held sway throughout the 18th century and into the 19th.

An editorial calling for copyright protection of newspaper articles appeared in The Reasoner in 1844, in which the authors argued, “If the public desire a really free press, they must not look to it as a source of taxation; and if they are anxious for truth, for elevated and elevating sentiments, for ideas matured by study and reflection, and an honest exposition of grievances, they must recognise original articles as property, and secure them against a plundering appropriation by a copyright.”

British lawyer James Paterson, in an 1880 commentary on the liberty of the press, speech, and public worship, said that ”When any person is free to publish whatever he deems interesting or valuable either as a mode of procuring profit to himself or as a means of influencing the minds and will of his fellow-citizens on matters on which union and combination can effect great results, this is the highest mark of freedom.”

Into the 20th century, we can find reaffirmation of these views. Historian Edward Bloom writes:

Recognition of proprietary rights of authors under the Copyright Act of 1709 was an extremely important step in liberating the press. Copyright security helped to stimulate private initiative by providing authors of books some measure of financial independence. By at least partially obviating the economic function of political patrons, the Act of 1709 aided immeasurably in the freedom of the press.3

Finally, when legal scholars were just starting to develop the free speech critique of copyright, former Register of Copyrights Barbara Ringer offered these observations:

[T]he concept of copyright changed radically as a result of the revolutionary political movements of the late 18th and 19th centuries, and the first copyright statutes were based on a rejection of autocratic repression and monopoly control and upon a new recognition of individual liberty and the human rights of authors. … Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are meaningless unless authors are able to create independently from control by anyone, and to find a way to put their works before the public.4

The Engine of Free Expression

Nearly two centuries after the Bill of Rights and the first Copyright Act were passed, the Supreme Court said, “[T]he Framers intended copyright itself to be the engine of free expression. By establishing a marketable right to the use of one’s expression, copyright supplies the economic incentive to create and disseminate ideas.”5

This metaphor, it would seem, accurately reflects the predominant historical view of copyright. Copyright and freedom of the press were seen as compatible, rather than contradictory, means to promote knowledge and learning. Liberty of the press freed the public from the caprice of the licensor, allowing diverse ideas and sentiments to disseminate. Copyright freed authors from patronage, providing security for the legal rights that encouraged devotion of time and talents to works that promote the progress of art and science.

Footnotes

  1. Copyright scholars will recognize James Thomson as the author of the poem “The Seasons“, which was the subject of two of the most important lawsuits in copyright history: Millar v. Taylor and Donaldson v. Beckett. [↩]
  2. See Connecticut Copyright Statute (1783); New Jersey Copyright Statute (1783); Massachusetts Copyright Statute (1783); New Hampshire Copyright Statute (1783); Maryland Copyright Statute (1783); Rhode Island Copyright Statute (1783); Pennsylvania Copyright Statute (1784); South Carolina Copyright Statute (1784); Virginia Copyright Statute (1785); North Carolina Copyright Statute (1785); Georgia Copyright Statute (1786); New York Copyright Statute (1786). [↩]
  3. Edward Bloom, Johnson on a Free Press: A Study in Liberty and Subordination, A Journal of English Literary History (Dec. 1949). [↩]
  4. The Demonology of Copyright, R.R. Bowker Memorial Lecture, 1974. [↩]
  5. Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises, 471 US 539, 558 (1985). [↩]
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Copyright and the First Amendment: The Unexplored, Unbroken Historical Practice, Part 3

December 19, 2011 · · 3 comments

The question I’ve been asking in a series of recent posts is whether history can provide any insight into current claims that copyright law and the First Amendment conflict. As I noted, the Congress’s constitutional authority to secure exclusive rights to creators and the First Amendment’s prohibition on Congress making any laws abridging the freedom of speech and the press coexisted for nearly two centuries before any conflict between the two was suggested by scholars or considered by courts.

Surely there must be something to explain that two hundred years of near silence. And if we can explain it, we should be able to better understand how to approach current debates concerning the two areas of law.

I previously noted that copyright was primarily conceived as a property right in the 18th and 19th centuries, and invasions of property rights were not part of the freedom of the press. I also noted that before the First Amendment was ratified, a majority of the 13 original US states had passed copyright laws after providing for the freedom of the press, lending strength to the argument that the Framers conceived the two as wholly consistent.

As I’ve researched this question, I’ve realized more and more that one of the keys to understanding the history is understanding how people in the 18th and 19th centuries conceived “freedom of speech” and “freedom of the press.”

There’s a certain attraction to an absolutist First Amendment: “No law” means no law.1 But that position is not very helpful, since the Amendment doesn’t define “freedom of speech” or freedom of the press. If, on the one hand, “freedom of speech” means one can say anything at anytime without facing liability, then the FDA is acting unconstitutionally when it requires pharmaceutical companies to list side effects of the medication they sell. On the other hand, if “freedom of speech” means only the freedom to agree with the government, then Congress could enact all sorts of constitutional speech regulations.2 In this sense, you could argue that everyone is a First Amendment absolutist, the disagreement is only over the meaning of “freedom of speech.”3

Freedom of the Press

“What is the liberty of the press?” asked Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, a question that best illustrates how the concept was perceived at the time.

Nowadays, it is perhaps most common to refer to the right of “free expression” as a combination of the rights of free speech and a free press.4 But when the First Amendment was adopted, freedom of press and speech were distinct enough to be mentioned separately. In a very broad sense, “freedom of the press” was the right to publish that which you had the right to speak — the liberty of the press was the expansion of the freedom of speech “by mechanical means,” as one 19th century author put it.5 Far more debate at the time centered around the meaning of the freedom or liberty of the press than the freedom of speech.

The invention of the printing press allowed the dissemination of speech on a grand scale. As a result, it was soon strictly controlled by political and religious authorities. The idea of a press free from this control in England was influenced heavily by the writings of John Milton and became a reality after the Licensing Act of 1662, which prohibited any printing without a government license, finally expired in 1695.

A full discussion on what the liberty of the press meant after this time is beyond one blog post, so I’ll focus on the key points.

First, liberty of the press, at a minimum, meant that a government could not require prior approval for someone to publish a work. William Blackstone wrote that this liberty “consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications” though it does not forbid subsequent punishment for criminal matter. The reasoning for this was that the ability to subject the press to the power of a government censor or licensor “is to subject all freedom of sentiment to the prejudices of one man, and make him the arbitrary and infallible judge of all controverted points in learning, religion, and government.”6

Thomas Paine wrote about the liberty of the press from an American perspective, explaining how the concept was a result of history:

Nothing is more common with printers, especially of newspapers, than the continual cry of the Liberty of the Press, as if because they are printers, they are to have more privileges than other people. As the term “Liberty of the Press” is adopted in this country without being understood, I will state the origin of it, and show what it means. The term comes from England, and the case was as follows:

Prior to what is in England called the revolution, which was in 1689, no work could be published in that country, without first obtaining the permission of an officer appointed by the government for inspecting works intended for publication. The same was the case in France, except that in France there were forty who were called censors, and in England there was but one, called Imprimateur.

At the revolution, the office of Imprimateur was abolished, and as works could then be published without first obtaining the permission of the government officer, the press was, in consequence of that abolition, said to be free, and it was from this circumstance that the term Liberty of the Press arose. The press, which is a tongue to the eye, was then put exactly in the case of the human tongue. A man does not ask liberty before hand to say something he has a mind to say, but he becomes answerable afterwards for the atrocities he may utter. In like manner, if a man makes the press utter atrocious things, he becomes as answerable for them as if he had uttered them by word of mouth. Mr. Jefferson has said in his inaugural speech, that “error of opinion might be tolerated, when reason was left free to combat it.” This is sound philosophy in cases of error. But there is a difference between error and licentiousness.

Some lawyers in defending their clients, for the generality of lawyers, like Swiss soldiers, will fight on either side, have often given their opinion of what they defined the liberty of the press to be. One said it was this, another said it was that, and so on, according to the case they were pleading. Now these men ought to have known that the term, liberty of the press, arose from a FACT, the abolition of the office of Imprimateur, and that opinion has nothing to do in the case. The term refers to the fact of printing free from prior restraint, and not at all to the matter printed, whether good or bad. The public at large, or in case of prosecution, a jury of the conntry, will be judges of the matter.7

This prohibition on prior restraints is at the core of the liberty of the press and the one aspect that everyone agrees on.8 What the liberty of the press means beyond that, however, was subject to great debate.

Second, this debate over the nature of the freedom of the press beyond the prohibition on prior restraints revolved largely around libel: whether defamatory, seditious, blasphemous, or obscene.9 Could government punish political criticism? Was truth a defense to published statements that injured an individual’s reputation?10 A great deal of these debates was spurred by the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, which would be the most significant event in free speech history until the espionage and sedition acts passed during World War I (acts which served as the genesis for modern First Amendment jurisprudence).11

Copyright rarely entered in any of these debates, and when it did, it only did so peripherally. When Pennsylvania was discussing the ratification of the US Constitution in 1787, for example, one delegate raised the concern that, without a federal bill of rights protecting the liberty of the press, Congress might use its power to secure exclusive rights to authors not to pass a copyright law but to return to a general system of press licensing.12

But there is enough evidence to suggest that copyright law was generally — and noncontroversially — conceived of as completely outside the scope of the liberty of the press. Enjoining or restraining the publication of infringing material was a permissible prior restraint.

A Permissible Prior Restraint

The shared history of the liberty of the press and copyright law reinforces this idea.

As mentioned above, William Blackstone described the liberty of the press as “laying no previous restraints upon publications.” But elsewhere, he recognized that English courts frequently enjoined publications that infringed on copyright.

In the United States following the Revolutionary War, liberties were jealously guarded by the states. Yet six of the twelve pre-Constitution state copyright acts — Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, and South Carolina — explicitly gave the author of a work “the sole liberty of printing, reprinting, and vending” that work, suggesting that protection of copyright was compatible with the goals of a free press.

James Iredell, one of the first Supreme Court Justices of the United States, wrote in 1788 while the Constitution was undergoing ratification:

The liberty of the press is always a grand topic for declamation, but the future Congress will have no other authority over this than to secure to authors for a limited time an exclusive privilege of publishing their works. This authority has been long exercised in England, where the press is as free as among ourselves or in any country in the world; and surely such an encouragement to genius is no restraint on the liberty of the press, since men are allowed to publish what they please of their own, and so far as this may be deemed a restraint upon others it is certainly a reasonable one. [Emphasis added.]13

As noted earlier, the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 triggered sharp debate over the liberty of the press. At times, copyright law was used to illustrate how that liberty was a delimited one:

When religion is concerned, Congress shall make no law respecting the subject: when the freedom of the press is concerned, Congress shall make no law abridging its freedom; but they may make any laws on the subject which do not abridge its freedom. And in fact, the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution authorizes them in express terms “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 discoveries.” Now if Congress could not make any laws respecting the freedom of the press, they could not secure for limited times to authors their respective writings, by prohibiting those writings from being published and vended, except by those whom the authors should expressly permit.14

Louisiana, which became a state in 1812, enacted a comprehensive code of laws in 1825. The Code was largely the result of efforts by appointed Edward Livingston, a former member of the US House of Representatives and opponent of the Alien and Sedition Acts, to devise a comprehensive criminal code for the state. Though never enacted, the importance of the Code shouldn’t be underestimated.15

The Code is notable for including a section on “Offenses against the liberty of the press.” As Livingston explained in a preliminary report for the code:

It has generally been thought a sufficient protection to declare, that no punishment should be inflicted on those who legally exercise the right of publishing; but hitherto no penalties have been denounced against those who illegally abridge this liberty. Constitutional provisions are, in our republics, universally introduced to assert the right, but no sanction is given to the law. Yet do not the soundest principles require it? If the liberty of publishing be a right, is it sufficient to say that no one shall be punished for exercising it? I have a right to possess my property, yet the law does not confine itself to a declaration that I shall not be punished for using it; something more is done; and it is fenced round with penalties, imposed on those who deprive me of its enjoyment.

The Lousiana Code of 1825 made it a misdemeanor for anyone to use violence, threats, or other means to prevent a person from exercising their freedom of speech or the press. The only exception for this was the filing of a lawsuit for libel or copyright infringement.

The law also made it against the law for a judge to enjoin, restrain, or prevent the publication of any writing, punishable by a fine ranging from $500-1000 (in 1825 dollars) and a two year suspension. There was only one exception to this:

It is no infringement of the last article to grant an injunction against the publication of any literary work, on the application of a person who shall satisfy the court or judge granting the injunction, that he is the author or proprietor of the work intended to be published, and that the publication will be injurious to his rights.

Similar provisions were nearly adopted by the US Congress itself, though not for the country as a whole.

The District of Columbia was established as the capitol of the United States shortly after the Constitution was adopted and placed under the exclusive control of the federal government. For decades, efforts were made to codify the civil and criminal laws that governed the District.16

One such effort led to a proposed system of laws that was reported in a joint committee of Congress in February of 1832. This code was heavily influenced by Livingston’s Louisiana code; the provisions for offenses against the liberty of the press were imported word for word. The District of Columbia, however, declined to adopt the proposed code.

The idea of copyright as a restraint congruous with the liberty of the press continued throughout the 20th century.

For example, the following is taken from the Columbia Law Review in 1917:

In general, so highly has freedom of speech and of the press been held that, regardless of subsequent punishment, no censorship before publication has been tolerated, and, in consequence, to this day, courts will neither enjoin publications nor allow interference with them, except in the special case where written utterances are a part of a conspiracy to injure property … Similarly, the infringement of a copyright has been enjoined.17

And this is from the Supreme Court in 1971:

The Congress has authorized a strain of prior restraints against private parties in certain instances … Article I, § 8, of the Constitution authorizes Congress to secure the “exclusive right” of authors to their writings, and no one denies that a newspaper can properly be enjoined from publishing the copyrighted works of another.18

So it would seem that throughout the history of copyright, protection of an author’s exclusive rights was not seen as offensive to the freedom of the press.

Footnotes

  1. First Amendment absolutism was embraced by Supreme Court Justice Black in the mid-20th century but never accepted by courts. Today it is very much a minority view. [↩]
  2. This example isn’t hyperbole. As debates over the constitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 raged, newspaper editor Benjamin Russell wrote, in support of the law, that “it is patriotism to write in favor of our government — it is sedition to write against it.” [↩]
  3. See Eugene Volokh, What Part of “Make No Law” Don’t I Understand? for more about this. [↩]
  4. See, for example, Connick v. Myers, 461 US 138, 154 (1983); United States v. O’Brien, 391 US 367, 377 (1968); New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 US 254, 285 (1964). [↩]
  5. James Paterson, The Liberty of the Press, Speech, and Public Worship, pg. 14, (London, 1880); See generally Eugene Volokh, “The Freedom … of the Press”, From 1791 to 1868 to Now — Freedom of the Press as an Industry, or the Press as a Technology? 160 University of Pennsylvania Law Review (2011). [↩]
  6. Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book 4, Ch. 11. [↩]
  7. The Political Writings of Thomas Paine Volume 2, pp. 464-65 (J.P. Mendum, ed. 1859). [↩]
  8. See James Wilson, Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention, December 1, 1787: “What is meant by the liberty of the press is, that there should be no antecedent restraint upon it; but that every author is responsible when he attacks the security or welfare of the government, or the safety, character, and property of the individual.”; Respublica v. Oswald, 1 US 319 (1788); Henry Lee, Report of the Minority on the Virginia Resolutions, J. House of Delegates (Va.), 6:93-9522 January 22, 1799, “In fact the liberty of the press is a term which has a definite and appropriate signification, completely understood. It signifies a liberty to publish, free from previous restraint, any thing and every thing at the discretion of the printer only, but not the liberty of spreading with impunity false and scandalous slanders which may destroy the peace and mangle the reputation of an individual or of a community.”; Commonwealth v. Blanding, 3 Pick. 304 (Mass. 1825); “Besides, it is well understood, and received as a commentary on this provision for the liberty of the press, that it was intended to prevent all such previous restraints upon publications as had been practised by other governments, and in early times here, to stifle the efforts of patriots towards enlightening their fellow subjects upon their rights and the duties of rulers. The liberty of the press was to be unrestrained, but he who used it was to be responsible in case of its abuse; like the right to keep fire arms, which does not protect him who uses them for annoyance or destruction.”; Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, 1833: “That this amendment was intended to secure to every citizen an absolute right to speak, or write, or print, whatever he might please, without any responsibility, public or private, therefor, is a supposition too wild to be indulged by any rational man. … the language of this amendment imports no more, than that every man shall have a right to speak, write, and print his opinions upon any subject whatsoever, without any prior restraint, so always, that he does not injure any other person in his rights, person, property, or reputation; and so always, that he does not thereby disturb the public peace, or attempt to subvert the government. It is neither more nor less, than an expansion of the great doctrine, recently brought into operation in the law of libel, that every man shall be at liberty to publish what is true, with good motives and for justifiable ends.”; Patterson v. Colorado, 205 US 454, 462 (1907). [↩]
  9. See Henry Schofield, 2 Essays on Constitutional Law and Equity 514-29 (1921). [↩]
  10. See Eugene Volokh, The Original Meaning of the Free Speech/Press Clause, Sept. 15, 2008. [↩]
  11. See Steven G. Gey, The Brandenburg Paradigm and Other First Amendments, 12 Journal of Constitutional Law 971, 975 (2010). [↩]
  12. “Tho’ it is not declared that Congress have a power to destroy the liberty of the press; yet, in effect, they will have it. For they will have the powers of self-preservation. They have a power to secure to authors the right of their writings. Under this, they may license the press no doubt; and under licensing the press, they may suppress it.” Robert Whitehill, remarks of December 1, 1787, in Pennsylvania and the Federal Constitution 1787-1788, pg 771. [↩]
  13. Answers to Mr. Mason’s Objections to the New Constitution Recommended by the Late Convention at Philadelphia, in Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States, pg. 361. [↩]
  14. Remarks of George Taylor, December 21, 1798, The Virginia Report of 1799-1900, Touching the Alien and Sedition Laws; Together with the Virginia Resolutions of December 21, 1798, pg. 136. [↩]
  15. Stuart P. Green, The Louisiana Criminal Code: Ten Proposals for Reform, 2002. [↩]
  16. Justice Walter S. Cox, Efforts to Obtain a Code of Laws for the District of Columbia, 1898. [↩]
  17. Constitutional Protection of the Right of Freedom of Speech and of the Press 17 Columbia Law Review 622-24 (Nov. 1917). [↩]
  18. New York Times v. United States, 403 US 713, 731 n.1 (1971)(J. White dissent). [↩]
Posted in: Copyright history · 3 comments

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Copyright and the First Amendment: The Unexplored, Unbroken Historical Practice

November 22, 2011 · · 5 comments

“If you would understand anything,” said Aristotle, “observe its beginning and its development.”

Understanding the historical relationship between copyright and the First Amendment is especially relevant today, with free speech concerns raised over pending rogue sites legislation — the PROTECT IP Act in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House — and domain name seizures — the Second Circuit will be hearing arguments about whether the seizure of the Rojadirecta domain names constitute a prior restraint in December.

Copyright law has long provided for preliminary injunctive relief (I believe the provisions of PROTECT IP and SOPA can be seen as a species of preliminary injunctive relief), and to a lesser extent, seizure and forfeiture. Over much of the 20th century, courts have turned to the First Amendment to strengthen procedural requirements in cases involving obscenity, libel, or news reporting. Yet preliminary relief for copyright infringement — whether injunctive, through actual seizures, or otherwise — has remained immune from any successful procedural First Amendment challenge.

Why is this?

The question is difficult to answer because most of the attention on the relationship between copyright and free speech has come only recently. Until the late 1960s, the idea that there exists any tension between the First Amendment’s prohibition on government restrictions of expression and copyright law’s encouragement of expression was nearly nonexistent. Since then, however, and especially after the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Copyright Term Extension Act in the late 1990s, many have turned their attention to finding contradictions between free speech and copyright.1

While the focus on contradictions is recent, earlier scholars had noted that copyright infringement at the very least plays by different rules when it comes to the First Amendment:

It is quite evident that no new principles of liberty were intended to be set forth by the First Amendment, and that, however enticing a philosophical theory of freedom of the press and of speech may be, the guaranty must be construed with reference to the common law which gave it birth. When Blackstone declared in 1769 that the liberty of the press consisted in placing no previous restraints upon publications, he was not laying down a new principle of constitutional theory, but merely stating what he believed to be the existing law. Apparently his generalization was too broad. Injunctions against the infringement of a copyright were not infrequent in his day.2

This quote suggests that the reason why equitable remedies for copyright infringement — injunctions and seizures especially — have withstood First Amendment scrutiny where those same remedies would fail in other cases remains somewhat of a mystery.

The beginnings and development of copyright and the First Amendment are still under-observed: Eldred v. Ashcroft devoted a scant two sentences to that history to show that, since the Copyright Act of 1790 and the First Amendment were adopted close in time, they are compatible.

I believe a closer look at the historical record can shed more light on this mystery (though I don’t mean to suggest in any way that I am the first to do so).3 I think this historical record shows a number of reasons why copyright law, though not “categorically immune from challenges under the First Amendment”,4 has nevertheless existed comfortably alongside the First Amendment.

The first reason is that legal thinkers primarily conceived of copyright as a property right. Property is on the same footing as life and liberty. Freedom of speech, or freedom of the press, ends where deprivation of property begins.

Literary Property

Of course, any mention of “copyright” and “property” in the same sentence nowadays can cause some to go in a tizzy. Partly this is due to an impoverished concept of property; that property only refers to tangible objects (forgetting about intangibles like stocks, bonds, promissory notes, and other financial instruments), or that copyright can’t be property because infringement doesn’t deprive the holder of possession or ownership (except if I smash your car window, we’d say I violated your property rights even though you still possess the same amount of glass). Setting aside these naive arguments, the modern critique of copyright as property goes something like this: Although it is entirely correct to characterize copyright as property in a descriptive sense, we shouldn’t characterize copyright as property in a normative sense, because that would be bad, from a policy standpoint.5 These arguments are beyond the scope of this article — I’m concerned with whether copyright was thought of as property when the First Amendment was first enacted.

Indeed it was. In 1792, James Madison wrote that “property” has a “larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage“; this meaning includes more than just “a man’s land, or merchandize, or money.”6 Legal scholar Adam Mossoff describes this concept of property as the “dominant” understanding of property in 18th and 19th century America.7

And copyright certainly fit within this understanding of property at the time — it was referred to as “literary property” more often than not. Copyright was expressly described as property in several of the State copyright acts that predated the US Constitution.8 The Supreme Court has classified and referred to copyright as property throughout its history — in 1823, for example, the Court stated, “The protection of property should extend as well to one subject as to another: to that which results from improvements, made under the faith of titles emanating from the government, as to a proprietary interest in the soil, derived from the same source. It extends to literary property, the fruit of mental labour.”9

In 1839, the New York Chancery Court decided Brandreth v. Lance, a libel case and “the first American court decision setting aside a government action on constitutional free speech or free press grounds.”10 But in refusing to enjoin the libelous publication, the court implicitly notes that an injunction for copyright infringement would not infringe upon the liberty of the press:

It is very evident that this court cannot assume jurisdiction of the case presented by the complainant’s bill, or of any other case of the like nature, without infringing upon the liberty of the press, and attempting to exercise a power of preventive justice which, as the legislature has decided, cannot safely be entrusted to any tribunal consistently with the principles of a free government. This bill presents the simple case of an application to the court of chancery to restrain the publication of a pamphlet which purports to be a literary work, undoubtedly a tale of fiction, on the ground that it is intended as a libel upon the complainant. …

The utmost extent to which the court of chancery has ever gone in restraining any publication by injunction, has been upon the principle of protecting the rights of property. …

But it may, perhaps, be doubted whether his lordship in that case did not, to some extent, endanger the freedom of the press by assuming jurisdiction of the case as a matter of property merely, when in fact the object of the complainant’s bill was not to prevent the publication of her letters on account of any supposed interest she had in them as literary property, but to restrain the publication of a private correspondence, as a matter of feeling only. His decision in that case has, however, as I see, received the unqualified approbation of the learned American commentator on equity jurisprudence.11

The court also notes in a footnote, “There is, perhaps, but one instance in the books, of any judge having maintained the existence of a power in the court of chancery of restraining publications on any other ground, but that of property and copyright” (Emphasis added).

Liberty of the Press does not Limit Copyright Injunctions

The idea that copyright is a property right and injunctions to protect property rights do not infringe free speech remained throughout the 19th century and into the 20th. The Columbia Law Review wrote in 1913:

This immunity from an injunction, while applicable to libels, is not similarly applicable to other forms of injurious publications where the historical requirement of a jury trial is not so pressing. Accordingly, where the act of publication results in intimidation and coercion it is treated as an ordinary crime, and the liberty of the press does not then limit the jurisdiction of equity to protect property. Furthermore, according to the prevailing view, it seems that a publication, no matter how innocent in itself, may be enjoined if it is made in pursuance of a scheme which has an enjoinable element. Thus, although the courts are at variance as to whether an injunction may issue against a boycott, they are agreed that wherever such is the case, publications in aid thereof, even if libels, cannot claim the protection of the guaranty. In establishing this doctrine they assert that the right to engage in a lawful occupation is not less essential than that of free speech. In order, therefore, to obtain the greatest possible freedom of action and speech equally for all, these conflicting constitutional rights must be exercised in accordance with the maxim, Sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas. Certainly, the press should not be employed unjustifiably to ruin another’s occupation, and where such ruin is imminent the injunction, though a dangerous weapon, becomes a proper one [Emphasis added].12

And in 1971, Justice White of the Supreme Court itself weighed in, noting that “The Congress has authorized a strain of prior restraints against private parties in certain instances … Article I, § 8, of the Constitution authorizes Congress to secure the “exclusive right” of authors to their writings, and no one denies that a newspaper can properly be enjoined from publishing the copyrighted works of another.”13

Today, preliminary injunctions are common in copyright cases, and seizures of infringing goods are common, both through courts and administrative agencies. At the same time, while defendants have increasingly raised First Amendment defenses in the past 40 years, those defenses have almost without exception been unsuccessful.14

Call it what you will — a permissible prior restraint, a First Amendment exception, or a recognition of competing liberty interests — there is an unbroken historical practice of providing remedies for copyright infringement that would constitutionally fail in other areas of the law. This practice is premised in part on the view that copyright is a property right, and freedom of expression does not shield a defendant from invasions of property rights. As seen above, this premise appears to be established by the time of Blackstone’s Commentaries and has been alluded to several times since then.

Unbroken historical practice is obviously not ipse dixit proof of the constitutional firmity of a practice. But the development of the historical practice does increase our understanding of these issues today. Also, as mentioned earlier, the historical record reveals other reasons why the conflict that critics see between free speech and copyright has not been embraced by courts, reasons that I hope to write about in future posts.

Footnotes

  1. More detail on the history of copyright and First Amendment scholarship at my post, Copyright and Censorship. [↩]
  2. Freedom of the Press and the Injunction, Columbia Law Review, Vol. 13, No. 8, pp. 732-734 (Dec. 1913). [↩]
  3. See, for example, Edward Lee, Guns and Speech Technologies: How the Right to Bear Arms Affects Copyright Regulations of Speech Technologies (2008) — and I’m always interested in learning about other examples. [↩]
  4. Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 US 186, 221 (2003). [↩]
  5. See, for example, William Patry, Does it matter if copyright is property? Patry Copyright Blog, June 20, 2006, ”What those who seek to have copyright classified as property is clear enough though: Blackstonian sole dominion, justified by the very classification of property … But what if copyright is just a tort, as indeed courts refer to it as. Might that not lead to consideration of things in a different light, one that involves more of the balancing of interests one typically sees, say in, negligence actions, a Coase Theorem of copyright?”;  Siva Vaidhyanathan, Copyright as Cudgel, Chronicle of Higher Education, Aug. 2, 2002. ”We make a grave mistake when we choose to engage in discussions of copyright in terms of ‘property.’ Copyright is not about ‘property’ as commonly understood. It is a specific state-granted monopoly issued for particular policy reasons.” [↩]
  6. James Madison, Property. [↩]
  7. Is Copyright Property? 42 San Diego Law Review 29, 41 (2005). [↩]
  8. “Whereas the improvement of knowledge, the progress of civilization, the publick weal of the Commonwealth, and the advancement of human happiness, greatly depend on the efforts of learned and ingenious persons in the various arts and sciencs: As the principal encouragement such persons can have to make great and beneficial exertions of this nature, must exist in the legal security of the fruits of their study and industry to themselves, and as such security is one of the natural rights of all men, there being no property more peculiarly man’s own than that which is produced by the labour of his mind.” Massachusetts Copyright Statute (1783), New Hampshire Copyright Statute (1783), Rhode Island Copyright Statute (1783).

    “An act for securing to the authors of literary works an exclusive property therein for a limited time.” Virginia Copyright Statute (1785) (title).

    “An Act for securing Literary Property: Whereas nothing is more strictly a man’s own than the fruit of his study, and it is proper that men should be encouraged to pursue useful knowledge by the hope of reward; and as the security of literary property must greatly tend to encourage genius, to promote useful discoveries and to the general extension of art and commerce.” North Carolina Copyright Statute (1785). [↩]

  9. Green v. Biddle, 21 US 1, 57; See also Wheaton v. Peters, 33 US 591 (1834), discussing whether “literary property” is perpetual under copyright statute; Stephens v. Cady, 55 US 528, 531 (1853), speaking of the “property in the copy-right”; Canal Co. v. Clark, 80 US 311, 322 (1872), noting the “property” that exists “in copyrights”; Baker v. Selden, 101 US 99, 102 (1880), describing copyright as “exclusive property”; Holmes v. Hurst, 174 US 82, 86 (1899), explaining the nature of the “property” protected by copyright; Bobbs-Merrill v. Straus, 210 US 339, 346 (1908), referring to “copyright property”; Fox Film Corp. v. Doyal, 286 US 123, 127 (1932), “The production to which the protection of copyright may be accorded is the property of the author and not of the United States”; Dowling v. United States, 473 US 207, 217 (1985), exploring the “property rights of a copyright holder”; Stewart v. Abend, 495 US 207, 223 (1990), “the aspects of a derivative work added by the derivative author are that author’s property”. [↩]
  10. Eugene Volokh, Flag Burning and Free Speech, Wall Street Journal, July 3, 2009. [↩]
  11. Brandreth v. Lance, 8 Paige Ch. 24, 26 (N.Y. Ch. 1839). [↩]
  12. Freedom of the Press and the Injunction, Columbia Law Review, Vol. 13, No. 8, pp. 732-734 (Dec. 1913); See also Constitutional Protection of the Right of Freedom of Speech and of the Press, Columbia Law Review, Vol. 17, No. 7, pp. 622-624 (Nov. 1917), ”In general, so highly has freedom of speech and of the press been held that, regardless of subsequent punishment, no censorship before publication has been tolerated, and, in consequence, to this day, courts will neither enjoin publications nor allow interference with them, except in the special case where written utterances are a part of a conspiracy to injure property [Emphasis added].” The footnote following this text reads, “When the publication was a petition repudiated by its signers, an injunction was granted on the basis of property right in the signature. Similarly, the infringement of a copyright has been enjoined”; The Americana: A universal reference library, comprising the arts and sciences, literature, history, biography, geography, commerce, etc., of the world, Volume 12, “Press, Freedom of the”, George Edwin Rines editor (1908): “Such legal checks [on the liberty of the press] as remain are merely intended to prevent outrages of religion or decency, to protect subjects from defamation, and to conserve the copyright of authors.” [↩]
  13. New York Times v. U.S., 403 US 713, J. White, concurrence, n.1 (1971). [↩]
  14. I provided examples in previous posts, including ICE Seizures Criticism: Magic Words, Responding to Sellars: Copyright and Content-based Regulations, and Rojadirecta seeks refuge in First Amendment. [↩]
Posted in: Copyright history · 5 comments

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Why I support the Stop Online Piracy Act

November 16, 2011 · · 27 comments

[With the House Judiciary Committee holding a hearing underway on H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act, I'd like to share my thoughts on the bill on a more personal level.]

I’m passionate about the framework provided by copyright law because I am passionate about the expressive works that have been created in the US over the past 200 plus years because of this framework. From the silly to the sublime, to those that educate and those that entertain, these works have advanced our society, our culture, and our economy.

As a media and cultural consumer, I am excited by the increasingly innovative new ways I can access the news, movies, television shows, music, and other works I love online, and I strongly hope that those who create them can continue to create. I believe the Stop Online Piracy Act is both necessary and carefully crafted to ensure creators have effective recourse against sites that profit off misappropriation of their work.

Effective copyright protection, on a fundamental level, is a significant governmental interest, and one of the few enumerated powers of the federal government in the Constitution. In 1832, the Supreme Court said “To promote the progress of the useful arts is the interest and policy of every enlightened government.”1

Only two years later, Supreme Court Justice Thompson said in his dissent to the seminal opinion in Wheaton v. Peters, “In my judgment, every principle of justice, equity, morality, fitness and sound policy concurs, in protecting the literary labours of men, to the same extent that property acquired by manual labour is protected.”2

The history of copyright law presents a common theme of technological advancement bringing challenges to creators. In the past, we’ve seen these challenges with the introduction of new forms of media that allowed the recording of sound, images, and motion pictures; broadcasting in the form of radio and television; and even advancements in transportation that have made our world smaller and more connected. Today, creators face challenges to adapt to digital technologies and the Internet, which allows global communication on an unprecedented scale.

But no matter how rapidly technology advances, we should not lose sight of the fundamental principles of “justice, equity, morality, fitness and sound policy” that the protection of expression is built on.

In the words of James Madison, “The public good fully coincides” with “the claims of individuals” under copyright law.3 The introduction of new expressive works, whether in the form of books, music, films, television, or photographs, do much to advance this public good. They teach, entertain, and shed light on the human condition. So it is vitally important that those works are protected just as much online as they are offline.

Copyright Online

The Internet today looks vastly different today than it did in 1998, when the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was enacted. There was no Google, no YouTube, and no Facebook. The technologies that make rich, fully-interactive sites like these possible simply didn’t exist at the time. It would be hard to imagine a world wide web like this today. Today’s web allows a myriad of ways for people to engage in communication, commerce, social networking, entertainment, and learning. This is possible because the technology behind the web continued to progress, rather than being frozen in place. The same should be true of copyright law.

The consensus is that the DMCA has generally worked well for copyright holders and service providers. Its safe harbors shield service providers from liability for material uploaded by users where the service provider doesn’t have knowledge that the material is infringing, doesn’t receive a direct financial benefit from the infringing activity where the provider has the right and ability to control the activity, and acts expeditiously to disable access to uploaded material when it receives a notification of claimed infringement.

These notice-and-takedown provisions can be more effective and efficient for removing infringing material than litigation. They work well, in other words, for good faith, legitimate service providers who cooperate with copyright holders to detect and deal with online infringement.

They should not, however, provide cover for service providers who deliberately set out to build sites based on infringement — where, for example, the site was primarily designed to have no other purpose than to engage in or facilitate infringing acts, the site operator has taken deliberate action to remain unaware of a high probability that the site is used for infringement, or the site operator has taken affirmative steps to promote the use of the site for infringing acts.

The DMCA safe harbors were crafted to provide legal certainty in the new online world and protect service providers from the risk of liability for inadvertent or incidental infringement that they aren’t aware of or can’t monitor or control. They certainly weren’t crafted to protect against those who actively and deliberately design and operate their sites to profit off piracy.

In practice, the DMCA notice-and-takedown provisions are ineffective against sites like this. Many creators would find it a full time job to send notices against these types of sites. And the provisions are especially ineffective against sites that are directed at and easily accessible by US residents but located outside the US and dismissive of US law.

Sections 102 and 103 of the Stop Online Piracy Act fill this gap by giving the Attorney General and copyright holders new tools that directly target rogue sites. The goal of this legislation is not to completely eradicate online piracy, or allow copyright owners to “go back to the way things were.” Piracy is inherently part of the copyright landscape, and it will always exist in some form or another.

The goal is rather to allow creators and legitimate intermediaries to continue to develop sustainable business models that allow both widespread dissemination of content and the ability to be remunerated for investing time and money creating that content. Obviously, one of the big challenges facing creators is figuring out these business models, but that doesn’t mean the law shouldn’t also play a role.

Nearly forty years ago, former Register of Copyrights Barbara Ringer delivered an essay at a time when Congress was in the midst of reforming the Copyright Act to ensure it would remain relevant in the information age. Like today, it was a time of rapid technological change, with new stakeholders emerging and contentious debate. But though the technologies and players were different, Ringer’s words remain just as relevant today:

If the copyright law is to continue to function on the side of light against darkness, good against evil, truth against newspeak, it must broaden its base and its goals. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are meaningless unless authors are able to create independently from control by anyone, and to find a way to put their works before the public. Economic advantage and the shibboleth of “convenience” distort the copyright law into a weapon against authors. Anyone who cares about freedom and authorship must insure that, in the process of improving the efficiency of our law, we do not throw it all the way back to its repressive origins in the Middle Ages.4

Copyright Law and Freedom of Expression

The introduction of the Stop Online Piracy Act has raised free speech concerns from various parties. It’s absolutely vital that the proposed bill — any bill for that matter — conforms with the First Amendment, which, I believe, it does. Noted First Amendment expert Floyd Abrams believes the bill is fully compatible with First Amendment protections as well, as he explained in a recent letter.

But it’s also important to keep in mind that copyright law itself serves an important role in furthering the goals of freedom of expression. This role has been recognized since the founding of the United States. As the Supreme Court said in Eldred v. Ashcroft, “the Framers intended copyright itself to be the engine of free expression.”5

Founding Father and second president John Adams once wrote, “Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.” Our fourth president, and the Father of the Constitution, James Madison added, “The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.”

The Copyright Clause in the Constitution incorporates both these ideas, thus serving as a critical component in the protection of liberty. It gives Congress the power to secure to authors the exclusive rights in their writings in order to promote the progress of the useful arts and sciences. The importance of this power cannot be understated, and neither can the importance that these exclusive rights be truly secure in order to promote progress and spur diffusion of new expression.

That copyright law complements rather than conflicts with freedom of expression has been recognized many times since then.

For example, in an 1844 article appearing in The Reasoner magazine, the author writes: “If the public desire a really free press, they must not look to it as a source of taxation; and if they are anxious for truth, for elevated and elevating sentiments, for ideas matured by study and reflection, and an honest exposition of grievances, they must recognise original articles as property, and secure them against a plundering appropriation by a copyright.”

And in an 1880 treatise on the liberty of the press, the author characterizes the “valuable property in the hands of the author who composes and publishes his thoughts” as one of the forms “which the right of free speech and thought assumes.”

Perhaps the best examination of the complementary relationship between copyright and freedom of expression comes Barbara Ringer, who noted:

[I]t is important to recognize that the Statute of Anne of 1710, the first copyright statute anywhere and the Mother of us all, was enacted precisely because the whole autocratic censorship/monopoly/ licensing apparatus had broken down completely. As a result of the bloodless revolution taking place in the English constitutional system, basic individual freedoms, notably freedom of speech and freedom of the press, were becoming established under common law principles. The Statute of Anne marked the end of autocracy in English copyright and established a set of democratic principles : recognition of the individual author as the ultimate beneficiary and fountainhead of protection and a guarantee of legal protection against unauthorized use for limited times, without any elements of prior restraint of censorship by government or its agents.

She later observes, “It is striking that the second and third copyright statutes in the world — those of the United States of America and of France — were adopted immediately following the revolutions in those countries that overthrew autocratic government and were based on ideals of personal liberty and individual freedom.”

Prior restraint and censorship are antithetical to the First Amendment, but doing nothing in the face of rampant online piracy disgraces the goals of freedom of expression as well. The Stop Online Piracy Act helps secure creators’ rights online. Rogue sites jeopardize the ability of creators and firms to invest time and resources into creating new expression that advances society and culture. Current law is insufficient to address this harm; this bill would help restore the security of copyrights online.

Due Process

The rule of law is one of the most central and vital aspects of a free society. The US Constitution guarantees fair and impartial proceedings, protects citizens from arbitrary and unequalapplications of law, and limits what the government can do before depriving someone of life, liberty, or property.

But like freedom of speech, the concept of due process encompasses more than just Constitutional limits. Due process requires that rights have effective remedies available. Doing nothing violates the spirit of the rule of law.

The Stop Online Piracy Act strikes the correct balance between giving copyright holders an effective process for addressing sites whose only purpose is profiting off of the misappropriation of their works and ensuring that legitimate site operators are not punished.

I looked at the process of SOPA in more detail in previous posts: providing a walkthrough, showing why the bill will hit what it aims at, how it complements the DMCA, and why it merely provides new remedies for existing liability.

Conclusion

Sections 102 and 103 of the Stop Online Piracy Act represent a good start for creators who have long noted the injustice of others profiting from online piracy and escaping liability. Web services who are acting legitimately and legally should welcome rogue sites legislation because effective protection of creative labor is vital to a functioning online marketplace, and a functioning online marketplace benefits us all.

With this bill Congress can help secure the exclusive rights of creators. Doing so not only protects creators but also ensures that the development of innovative and sustainable services for consumers to access and enjoy media and content can continue.

Footnotes

  1. Grant v. Raymond, 31 US 218. [↩]
  2. 33 US 591 (1834). [↩]
  3. Federalist papers, No. 43. [↩]
  4. Barbara Ringer, Demonology of Copyright (1974). [↩]
  5. 537 US 186 (2003). [↩]
Posted in: Copyright reform · 27 comments

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Dispatches from the SOPAcolypse

November 02, 2011 · · 8 comments

Harold Camping has famously predicted the end of the world three times.

His first prediction — September 6, 1994 — came and went with little fanfare. His second attempt at setting a date for the apocalypse was far more successful. The Internet was abuzz as May 21, 2011 approached. But again, the world did not end.

Undeterred, Camping checked his math and announced a new date. October 21, 2011, would mark the final day of everything we know, for real this time. Wrong once again, the former leader of the California-based Family Radio has apparently retired from his role as apocalyptic soothsayer.

Apocalypse Now?

I mention Camping because a similar phenomenon occurs in the copyright realm. It seems that whenever new legislation is introduced, there are those who are ready to predict that if it passes, it will surely result in the demise of the Internet, or innovation, or some other thing we hold dear.

You can see this in action by taking a look at some of the headlines in response to the US House’s introduction of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA):

This are just a sampling of the dire predictions about the epic catastrophes SOPA would bring if passed — the SOPAcolpyse, if you will.

But, like Camping, copyright’s skeptics have made these predictions before.

Sometimes they are done with striking consistency. Sci-fi author Cory Doctorow says SOPA “might be the worst-ever copyright proposal in US legislative history.” Not one to make use of hyperbole sparingly, Doctorow also declared a 2005 French proposal the “worst copyright law in Europe”; in 2007, it was an EU proposal that would surely be the “worst copyright law in the world!”; little more than seven months later, he stated that a Canadian legislative proposal “promises to be the worst copyright law in the developed world.”

The same goes for copyright activist Lawrence Lessig, a big proponent of the “break the internet” line over the years. Talking in 2003 about his idea for a compulsory license that would cover P2P activity, he said, “We have to buy [music and movie companies] off, so they don’t break the Internet in the interim.” That same year on PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, it was DRM: “The response that the music industry has insisted on would be technologies that would essentially break the Internet.” Fast-forward to 2008, and Lessig, speaking at an event hosted by Harvard’s Berkman Center, Google, and the Family Online Safety Institute, again cautions against letting copyright law “break the Internet.”

The Sky is Falling

The doomsday scenarios began on day one. In February 1993, the Clinton administration put together the Information Infrastructure Task Force to study the advancement and development of information technologies, including the burgeoning Internet and infant web. Part of their mandate was examining the intersection of copyright law, digital technologies, and networked communications and exploring what changes were necessary.

The Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights released its report, Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure (the “White Paper”), in September of 1995, sparking the first wave of the “parade of horribles” that would accompany copyright reform from then on out.

Copyright scholar Pamela Samuelson penned an article in Wired magazine that gave a laundry-list of reasons to oppose legislation proposed after the White Paper was released: “your online service provider will be forced to snoop through your files”, it would “transform the emerging information superhighway into a publisher-dominated toll road”, it would “eliminate fair-use rights”, “it can be construed as outlawing many activities widely believed to be lawful.”

Others concurred. “The bill in Congress now, critics say, goes much too far … the Internet’s potential as a source of public education and free expression could be crippled … [it] could instead turn out to be the executioner of the Internet’s real promise.”

The initial legislation evolved to become the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which became law in 1998. Some still weren’t convinced the days of a free Internet weren’t numbered. A writer in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal predicted shortly after the DMCA became law that:

The post-DMCA Internet will feature even more of those damnable “404 – file not found” messages than it currently does. As media companies expand their demand-letter operations from commercial “piracy” to include negative commentary, transformative uses, and what they deem to be a little bit too much sampling or quotation, the ranks of the independent Internet publishers will be radically depopulated.

Ten years later, many of those same critics couldn’t praise the DMCA enough. Wired magazine calls it “the law that saved the web.” “Blogs, search engines, e-commerce sites, video and social-networking portals are thriving today thanks in large part to the notice-and-takedown regime ushered in by the much-maligned copyright overhaul.”

A Decade of Falling Sky

Since the DMCA, most copyright legislation has elicited similar responses.

The No Electronic Theft (NET) Act was passed in 1997, expanding the definition of “financial gain” in criminal copyright infringement and increasing criminal penalties. Among the opponents of the bill was the Association for Computing, which raised concerns that it would restrict dissemination of science, criminalize the transfer of information protected by fair use, and chill free speech in research institutions. Others warned it would greatly expand the scope of criminal infringement; “aggressive prosecutors would abuse their discretion to win convictions” or “bring weak felony cases to get quick misdemeanor plea bargains.”1

None of these concerns materialized. As Eric Goldman concludes after examining the five years following the Act, “the prosecutions to date appear generally consistent with Congress’ objectives for the Act.” None of the convictions could be fairly characterized as “de minimis“, none of the defendants could have raised a legitimate fair use defense, and universities and educators remained untouched by efforts under the Act.2

The Artists’ Rights and Theft Prevention (ART) Act of 2005 added provisions to criminal copyright law that expressly targeted “camming” and distribution of pre-release commercial works. Critics called it draconian, foresaw an uptick in prison sentences, and decried a lack of fair use in the Act. The provisions have instead been used judiciously; prisons have not been filled with cammers and leakers.

2008 brought the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO-IP) Act, a broad bill that amended civil and criminal provisions of the Copyright Act and created the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator position, currently held by Victoria Espinel.

The response? Michael Seman of NetSherpa wrote, “The passing of the PRO-IP act is the latest in a string of actions taken by the U.S. Government that result in further constricting the free exchange of ideas,” one that “means we’re close to losing the flow of culture that the Internet so greatly facilitates.” Mike Masnick said, “All it will actually serve to do is to limit more creative forms of expression and much more innovative business models from being allowed to thrive.” And noted copyright scholar William Patry remarked, “The dangers in the new Zero Tolerance to copyright go far beyond the individuals swept within its net, although that is bad enough: the Zero Tolerance approach threatens respect for law itself.”

Grokster pt. 2

Legislative proposals aren’t the only things that brings out the freedom and innovation pessimists.

The Supreme Court issued its decision in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios v. Grokster in 2005, holding that “one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright” may be liable for the resulting infringing acts by its users. In its amicus brief to the Grokster court, the National Venture Capital Association warned that a rule holding Grokster liable would “have a chilling effect on innovation.”

However, since Grokster:

[V]enture capital in the media and entertainment sectors grew faster than the rest of the VC market in four out of the six years. By comparison, in the five years before the Grokster decision, growth was lower in four of them. From 2000 to 2004, media and entertainment venture capital accounted for about 4.6 percent of total VC dollars invested. From 2006 through 2010, media and entertainment VC dollars grew to 7.1 percent of total VC dollars.3

This year alone, in a down economy, music-based startups have received nearly half a billion dollars in funding. And some of these startups are far more exciting than the mere hoarding of music files that Grokster and other P2P services offered.

Little difference that makes though. In a letter to Congress on the proposed PROTECT IP Act, a group of venture capitalists offer the same warning: the bill would “throttle innovation” and “chill investment.”

It’s the End of the World as We Know It

Despite this history, critics of the Stop Online Piracy Act promise that the bill spells the end of innovation, culture, freedom, and the very Internet itself, for real this time.

It won’t.

In the long term, the public benefits the most when both creators and innovators succeed. And our laws should continue to adapt to make sure that happens.

Footnotes

  1. Eric Goldman, A Road to No Warez: The No Electronic Theft Act and Criminal Copyright Infringement, 82 Oregon Law Review 369 (2003). [↩]
  2. Id. 392-96. [↩]
  3. Greg Sandoval, VCs to Congress: Antipiracy will ‘chill’ tech investment, CNet, June 24, 2011. [↩]
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