History of inventions and copyright protections: Difference between revisions

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(New page: 1776: *The power to enact copyright law is granted in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, also known as the Copyright Clause, which states: "The Congress shall have Power [. . .] To promote ...)
 
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1776:
===Terry Fischer Disaggregation Speech===
*The power to enact copyright law is granted in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, also known as the Copyright Clause, which states: "The Congress shall have Power [. . .] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." This clause forms the basis for U.S. copyright law ("Science", "Authors", "Writings") and patent law ("useful Arts", "Inventors", "Discoveries"), and includes the limited terms (or durations) allowed for copyrights and patents ("limited Times"), as well as the items they may protect ("exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"). In the U.S., copyright is administered by the United States Copyright Office, a part of the Library of Congress.
*Thomas Paine's pamphlet "Common Sense" published - 500,000 copies published its first year in 25 editions. "Common Sense" was highly influential in rallying public opinion to the side of United States independence.
Federal Copyright Law originates in a 1790 statute, adopted under the auspices of Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the Constitution
 
Only 3 kinds of works were protected under the original statute:  “Books, maps, charts”
1790:
[later subsumed in general category of “all the writings of an author” (1909)
*Copyright Act of 1790 - established U.S. copyright with term of 14 years with 14-year renewal
Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth century, Congress and the courts cooperated in expanding the set of protected creations
The U.S. Congress first exercised its power to enact copyright legislation with the Copyright Act of 1790. The Act secured an author the exclusive right to publish and vend "maps, charts and books" for a term of 14 years, with the right of renewal for one additional 14 year term if the author was still alive. The act did not regulate other kinds of writings, such as musical compositions or newspapers and specifically noted that it did not prohibit copying the works of foreign authors. The vast majority of writings were never registered — between 1790 and 1799, of 13,000 titles published in the United States, only 556 works were registered.
“Prints” are added by statute in 1802
*William Blake publishes The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; Mary Wollstonecraft publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Men; Edmund Burke  publishes Reflections on the Revolution in France;
“Musical Compositions” in 1831
“Dramatic Works”
1802:
In effect, were added to the galaxy by an 1856 statute granting the owners of copyrights in books the right to control public performance of their works – the only form of protection truly valuable to playwrights
*Prints added to protected works
An extension confirmed in subsequent statutes
*Washington Irving makes his first appearance in print at age nineteen, submitting observational letters to the New York Morning Chronicle under the name Jonathan Oldstyle
“Photographs” were added by statute 1865
*The Journal of the Royal Institution records one of the first experiments in photography.
*In the 1883 Burrow-Giles case, the SCt rejected a constitutional challenge to this provision, but only because the posed, studio photo of Oscar Wilde at issue in the case was, in the court’s judgment a “useful, new, harmonious, characteristic, and graceful picture.”
 
Gradually the aesthetic standard implicit in this judgment was softened, and copyright protection was tacitly extended to photos of all sorts
1831:
So nowadays, not only is xeroxing a landscape photograph clearly illegal, but even taking a substantially similar photo may give rise to an infringement claim
*First general revision of the copyright law. Music added to works protected against unauthorized printing and vending. First term of copyright extended to 28 years with privilege of renewal for term of 14 years.
*Arguably, for example, Ansel Adams famous photograph of the snake river is infringed by this recent calendar picture
*William Lloyd Garrison begins publication of the Liberator, an abolitionist periodical.
Photographs can even be infringed by copies in other media
*Edgar Allan Poe publishes his collection Poems
For example, in the judgment of the Second Circuit,
 
*this photo was infringed by
1837:
*this sculpture, despite the mockery plainly evident in the latter
*Samuel F.B. Morse develops a design for the electrical telegraph. America's first telegram was sent by Morse on January 6, 1838, across two miles of wire at Speedwell Ironworks near Morristown, New Jersey. The message read "A patient waiter is no loser." On May 24, 1844, he sent the message "What hath God wrought" (quoting Numbers 23:23) from the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the Capitol in Washington to the old Mt. Clare Depot in Baltimore.
“paintings; drawings; and chromos” were added to the statute in 1870
 
as were “statues”;
1856:
meaning 3-dimensional works of fine art
*Dramatic compositions added to protected works.
and “artistic models or designs” (1870)
*Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp; Herman Melville publishes The Piazza Tales and I and My Chimney
later subsumed in the broader category of “works of art” and “reproductions of works of arts” (1909)
 
Around the turn of the century, Advertisements were accepted into the fold (1903)
 
During the 19th c., courts had generally been hostile to the extension of copyright to ads – on the ground that they did nothing to “stimulate original investigation whether in literature, science or art, for the betterment of the people.”:
1865:
[Bracha: “In J.L. Mott Iron Works, for example, the court stated that the copyright law “sought to It found that plaintiff’s “work” was “a mere priced catalogue illustrated with pictures of wares offered for sale” --L. Mott Iron Works v. Clow, 82 F. 316, 318-19 (7th Cir. 1897); See also: Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 105-107
*Photographs added to protected works.
*This position is famously rejected by Justice Holmes in Bleistein (1903), which extended copyright protection to a circus poster:
*Mark Twain's story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is published in the New York Saturday Press.
Holmes reasoned: “A picture is none the less a picture, and none the less a subject of copyright that it is used for an advertisement.”
*P. T. Barnum publishes The Humbugs of the World
Motion Pictures are invented by Thomas Edison in the late 19th c.
 
By 1903, an intermediate appellate court had recognized them as copyrightable subject matter
1867:
Edison v. Lubin, 122 F. 240 (3d Cir. 1903).
*Christopher Latham Sholes invents the first successful manual typewriter
“Lectures, sermons & addresses” are added to the list by statute in 1909
 
Growth continues in the 20th century
1870:
“Fictional characters” and “plots” are recognized by judicial decisions as objects of protection
*Second general revision of the copyright law. Copyright functions centralized in the Library of Congress under the direction of the Librarian of Congress, and which all authors are required to deposit in the Library two copies of every book, pamphlet, map, print, and piece of music registered under copyright in the United States. Works of art added to protected works. Act reserved to authors the right to create certain derivative works including translations and dramatizations. Indexing of the record of registrations began.
An 1948 Copyright Office regulation, construing a provision of the 1909 statute abandoning the restriction to “fine art,” upheld by the SCt in Mazer (1954) extended copyright protection to useful objects, so long as their aesthetic and functional aspects were “conceptually separable”
*In New York City, the first pneumatic-subway is opened.
“Sound recordings” – as distinct from the compositions they embody – were added in 1972
*Jules Verne publishes Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Pantomimes and Choreographic works were formally added as part of the 1976 general reform of the statute
 
Software, formally, in 1978
1876:
Finally, Architecture was grudgingly given special protection by statute in 1990, in response to the United States’ belated accession to the Berne Convention
*Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone
Two gradual conceptual shifts underlie this steady expansion of the zone of coverage
 
The first, nicely traced by Oren Bracha in his dissertation in progress, is a movement from a conception of copyright as “trade specific regulation” to a conception that sees copyright as founded on the general principle of the right of creators to control their original works
1891:
A change partially completed in the 1909 general reform of the Copyright Statute and fully completed in the 1976 Reform
*First U.S. copyright law authorizing establishment of copyright relations with foreign countries. Records of works registered, now called the Catalog of Copyright Entries, published in book form for the first time in July 1891.
The second, emphasized by Peter Jaszi, is a change in what copyright is thought to protect: from the text to the “work”
*Thomas Hardy publishes Tess of the d'Urbervilles; Oscar Wilde publishes Salome
At the start of the 19th c., lawyers and Js thought that copyright law protected the sequence of words used in a book against verbatim reproduction
*Recording companies are mass-producing phonograph records
By the early 20th century century, they thought it shielded the market value of the underlying work no matter how expressed
 
The effect of this reconceptualization was to render illegal many forms of unauthorized use – including translations, abridgments, and motion-picture adaptations
1897:
*Copyright Office established as a separate department of the Library of Congress.
*Music protected against unauthorized public performance.
*Bram Stoker publishes Dracula
*John Philip Sousa publishes "Stars And Stripes Forever"   
 
1908:
*The Chicago Cubs win their second consecutive World Series. They have not won one since.
 
1909:
*Copyright Act of 1909 - third general revision of the copyright law. Admission of certain classes of unpublished works to copyright registration. Term of statutory protection for a work copyrighted in published form measured from the date of publication of the work. Renewal term extended from 14 to 28 years.  
*L. Frank Baum publishes The Road to Oz; William James publishes A Pluralistic Universe
1912:
*Motion pictures, previously registered as photographs, added to classes of protected works.  
*The Musketeers of Pig Alley, directed by D.W. Griffith, debuts as the first gangster film.
 
1920:
*KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania receives its license and goes on the air as the first US licensed commercial broadcasting station.
 
1930:  
*New York Times article, March 17, 1930: "Whalen to Be Asked to War on Song Pirates; Publishers Say They Face $15,000,000 Loss" - Reporting that the music publishing industry faced a loss of $15,000,000 nationally in the ensuing year, a committee of publishers will ask Police Commissioner Whalen today to wage a war on the song-sheet racket and its sponsors.
http://icanhaz.com/timepirate
 
 
1941:
*WCBS and WNBC begin broadcasting out of New York as the first commercially-licensed TV stations in the United States
*Joe DiMaggio records his 56-game hitting streak, still the longest in baseball history
 
1953:   
*Recording and performing rights extended to nondramatic literary works.  
*The UNIVAC 1103 is the first commercial computer to use random access memory.
 
1969:
*ARPANET, the predecessor to the Internet, makes the first networked connection between computers
 
1971:
*Ray Tomlinson creates what was to become the standard Internet e-mail address format, using the @ sign to separate user names from host names.
 
1973:
*Vydec is the first manufacturer to produce a word processing system using floppy disks for storage [History of Word Processing Through 1986: http://www.stanford.edu/~bkunde/fb-press/articles/wdprhist.html]
 
1975:
*Bill Gates founds Microsoft
 
1976:
*Copyright Act of 1976 - extended term to either 75 years or life of author plus 50 years, eliminated renewal option and registration requirement
*Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak found Apple Computer
*Wings' "Silly Love Songs" is Billboard's top record of the year
 
1983:
*Motorola DynaTAC 8000X is the first cellular phone to receive FCC approval in the U.S.
 
1985:
*Microsoft Windows 1.0 released
*Steve Jobs leaves Apple Computer
 
1988:
*Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 - established copyrights of U.S. works in Berne Convention countries
*George Michael's Faith is the top-selling album in the United States
 
1989:
*Tim Berners-Lee develops the structure for the World Wide Web at CERN in Switzerland
*Richard Stallman releases the first version of the General Public License (GPL) for software, which allows free distribution and modification of the code under the proviso that derived works be available under the same license
 
1994:
*Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) of 1994 - restored U.S. copyright for certain foreign works
*Netscape Navigator 1.0, the first widely distributed Web browser, released
 
1997:
*Apple Computer buys NeXT and Steve Jobs returns to Apple
*AOL introduces Instant Messenger
 
1998:
*Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 - extended terms to 95/120 years or life plus 70 years
*Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 - criminalized some cases of copyright infringement
*Google.com launches
*Apple Computer introduces the first iMac
*Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" is the top single in almost the entire world
 
1999:
*Napster, the first widely-popular music-sharing service, launches
 
2001:
*First iPod released, with 5GB of storage, and Apple begins opening retail stores
*Napster shuts down after U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Napster liable for copyright infringement in A&M Records v. Napster
 
2002:
*Creative Commons releases its first set of copyright licenses free for public use that apply the "some rights reserved" option to creative works.
 
2003:
*MySpace.com launches
*iTunes Music Store launches
 
2004:
*Flickr.com launches
 
2005:
*Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 - criminalized more cases of copyright infringement, permitted technology to "sanitize" works
*YouTube.com launches
 
2006-2008:
*Remix culture
*Lawrence Lessig steps down as head of Creative Commons [VIDEO]
*As of June 2008, iTunes Music Store has sold 5 billion songs, accounting for more than 70% of worldwide online digital music sales, and in 2008 became the leading music retailer in the United States.
*As of November 2007, 3.3 billion cell phone subscriptions
 
2008:
*Bill Gates retires from day-to-day operations at Microsoft

Revision as of 13:56, 17 December 2008

Terry Fischer Disaggregation Speech

Federal Copyright Law originates in a 1790 statute, adopted under the auspices of Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the Constitution Only 3 kinds of works were protected under the original statute: “Books, maps, charts” [later subsumed in general category of “all the writings of an author” (1909) Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth century, Congress and the courts cooperated in expanding the set of protected creations “Prints” are added by statute in 1802 “Musical Compositions” in 1831 “Dramatic Works” In effect, were added to the galaxy by an 1856 statute granting the owners of copyrights in books the right to control public performance of their works – the only form of protection truly valuable to playwrights An extension confirmed in subsequent statutes “Photographs” were added by statute 1865

  • In the 1883 Burrow-Giles case, the SCt rejected a constitutional challenge to this provision, but only because the posed, studio photo of Oscar Wilde at issue in the case was, in the court’s judgment a “useful, new, harmonious, characteristic, and graceful picture.”

Gradually the aesthetic standard implicit in this judgment was softened, and copyright protection was tacitly extended to photos of all sorts So nowadays, not only is xeroxing a landscape photograph clearly illegal, but even taking a substantially similar photo may give rise to an infringement claim

  • Arguably, for example, Ansel Adams famous photograph of the snake river is infringed by this recent calendar picture

Photographs can even be infringed by copies in other media For example, in the judgment of the Second Circuit,

  • this photo was infringed by
  • this sculpture, despite the mockery plainly evident in the latter

“paintings; drawings; and chromos” were added to the statute in 1870 as were “statues”; meaning 3-dimensional works of fine art and “artistic models or designs” (1870) later subsumed in the broader category of “works of art” and “reproductions of works of arts” (1909) Around the turn of the century, Advertisements were accepted into the fold (1903) During the 19th c., courts had generally been hostile to the extension of copyright to ads – on the ground that they did nothing to “stimulate original investigation whether in literature, science or art, for the betterment of the people.”: [Bracha: “In J.L. Mott Iron Works, for example, the court stated that the copyright law “sought to It found that plaintiff’s “work” was “a mere priced catalogue illustrated with pictures of wares offered for sale” --L. Mott Iron Works v. Clow, 82 F. 316, 318-19 (7th Cir. 1897); See also: Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 105-107

  • This position is famously rejected by Justice Holmes in Bleistein (1903), which extended copyright protection to a circus poster:

Holmes reasoned: “A picture is none the less a picture, and none the less a subject of copyright that it is used for an advertisement.” Motion Pictures are invented by Thomas Edison in the late 19th c. By 1903, an intermediate appellate court had recognized them as copyrightable subject matter Edison v. Lubin, 122 F. 240 (3d Cir. 1903). “Lectures, sermons & addresses” are added to the list by statute in 1909 Growth continues in the 20th century “Fictional characters” and “plots” are recognized by judicial decisions as objects of protection An 1948 Copyright Office regulation, construing a provision of the 1909 statute abandoning the restriction to “fine art,” upheld by the SCt in Mazer (1954) extended copyright protection to useful objects, so long as their aesthetic and functional aspects were “conceptually separable” “Sound recordings” – as distinct from the compositions they embody – were added in 1972 Pantomimes and Choreographic works were formally added as part of the 1976 general reform of the statute Software, formally, in 1978 Finally, Architecture was grudgingly given special protection by statute in 1990, in response to the United States’ belated accession to the Berne Convention Two gradual conceptual shifts underlie this steady expansion of the zone of coverage The first, nicely traced by Oren Bracha in his dissertation in progress, is a movement from a conception of copyright as “trade specific regulation” to a conception that sees copyright as founded on the general principle of the right of creators to control their original works A change partially completed in the 1909 general reform of the Copyright Statute and fully completed in the 1976 Reform The second, emphasized by Peter Jaszi, is a change in what copyright is thought to protect: from the text to the “work” At the start of the 19th c., lawyers and Js thought that copyright law protected the sequence of words used in a book against verbatim reproduction By the early 20th century century, they thought it shielded the market value of the underlying work no matter how expressed The effect of this reconceptualization was to render illegal many forms of unauthorized use – including translations, abridgments, and motion-picture adaptations