Losing Pieces of Our Culture

Chapter 13 of this book brings up the topic of digitizing works to make them more accessible to the public. It also discusses the “Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA), enacted in memory of the congressman and former musician Sonny Bono, who, his widow, Mary Bono, says, believed that ‘copyrights should be forever’” (215).

The first story in this chapter is about Eric Eldred, who wanted to put Hawthorne’s works and links to more information about the works on the Internet in hopes of making his daughters appreciate Hawthorne. Although he failed in his initial purpose, he did expand his “library of public domain works by scanning these works and making them available for free.’” This was fine and legal until he wanted to add Robert Frost’s poems to his collection. Eldred was not able to publish Frost’s poems legally because Congress extended the copyright based on the terms of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. Lessig filed a lawsuit on Eldred’s behalf declaring this Act unconstitutional because the Constitution says “Congress has the power to promote the Progress of Science…by securing for limited Times to Authors…exclusive Right to their…Writings…” (215).

I understand that the owners of these copyrights want to make more money off of these works, but works that have been published for a very long time are not as accessible to the public anymore. Some works have no commercial value anymore and are just going to sit around not being used because the owners of the copyright do not want to give up their rights. Old films in particular are in danger of becoming extinct because they “were produced on nitrate-based stock, and nitrate stock dissolves over time. They will be gone, and the metal canisters in which they are now stored will be filled with nothing more than dust” (225). Lessig goes on to say that “one researcher calculated for American culture, 94 percent of the films, books, and music produced between 1923 and 1946 is not commercially available” (228). How sad that we are losing a part of our culture all because some people will not give up their rights to the money from the sale of these works.

Although Lessig lost this lawsuit, he got the idea out there that maybe it was wrong to extend copyrights so far into the future. Lessig particularly enjoyed the cartoons that were made in reference to this topic. He put one of them in his book on page 247 that is worth taking a look at.