The People’s Access to Information: How Definitions of Ownership Influence the Public Domain

ABSTRACT

The following article is a composite review and critique of copyright systems in the United States and their impacts upon creators and individuals alike. The public domain is rapidly dwindling due to changes in copyright law that have greatly prolonged the length of copyright protections. The primary beneficiaries of these increased protections are the large entertainment corporations that can easily afford to contest what, in many cases, would otherwise be considered fair use of copyrighted material. This article argues the substantial need for collective action and stewardship of publicly owned information in order to generate a better and stronger public domain.

KEYWORDS:

• Public domain (copyright law)
• information resources
• fair use (copyright)

Acknowledgments

This article was originally written for the course LIS 701: Core Values, Ethics, and Issues of the Library and Information Professions, taught by Dr. Anthony Dunbar at Dominican University’s School of Information Studies. Nat is currently an MLIS candidate at Dominican, and they would like to thank Dr. Dunbar for his support and guidance on the preparation of this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Carrie Russell and Dwayne K. Buttler, Complete Copyright: An Everyday Guide for Librarians (Chicago: American Library Association, 2004), 6.

2. Tamara Sheppard, “Putting the Public in the Public Domain,” New Library World 110, no. 5/6 (2009): 208, doi: 10.1108/03074800910954244.

3. Ibid., 210.

4. Robert E. Spoo, “The American Public Domain and the Courtesy of the Trade in the 19th Century,” in Without Copyrights: Piracy, Publishing, and the Public Domain (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016), 14.

5. Ibid., 15.

6. Ibid.

7. Rebecca Tushnet, “Copy This Essay: How Fair Use Doctrine Harms Free Speech and How Copying Serves It,” The Yale Law Journal 114, no. 3 (2004): 543.

8. Keith Aoki, James Boyle, and Jennifer Jenkins, Bound by Law?: Tales from the Public Domain, New expanded ed. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 11.; Laura Nell Gasaway, Appendix in Copyright Questions and Answers for Information Professionals: From the Columns of against the Grain (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2013), 262.

9. Paula J. Hane, “Project Gutenberg Progresses,” Information Today 21, no. 5 (2004): 52.

10. Aoki, Boyle, Jenkins, Bound by Law?, 12–16.

11. Katharine Trendacosta, “Cops Using Music to Try to Stop Being Filmed Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, last modified March 9, 2021, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/02/cops-using-music-try-stop-being-filmed-just-tip-iceberg (accessed November 1, 2022).

12. Ibid.

13. Sasha Moss, “Music Modernization Act and the Future of Music Licensing,” R Street, last modified June 18, 2019, https://www.rstreet.org/2018/09/23/music-modernization-act-and-the-future-of-music-licensing/ (accessed October 28, 2022).

14. Tushnet, “Copy This Essay,” 546.

15. Ibid., 548.

16. Jesse Rifkin, “After Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Law Controversy, Copyright Clause … ,” Gov Track Insider, last modified May 20, 2022, https://govtrackinsider.com/after-floridas-don-t-say-gay-law-controversy-copyright-clause-restoration-act-is-josh-hawley-s-78348a895ad1 (accessed November 4, 2022).

17. Sheppard, “Putting the Public,” 212.

18. Ibid., 215.

19. Ibid., 214.

20. Carrie Russell, in Sheppard, “Putting the Public,” 213.

21. Thomas Mann, “The Peloponnesian War and the Future of Reference, Cataloging, and Scholarship in Research Libraries,” Journal of Library Metadata 8, no. 1 (2008): 60, doi: 10.1300/J517v08n01_06.