Copyholder

“ The copy is to the original as the pallid, smart, inane new wax work-group is to the vigorous, earnest, dignified group of living men and women whom it professes to duplicate. There is a mellow richness, a subdued color, in the old pictures, which is to the eye what muffled and mellowed sound is to the ear. That is the merit which is most loudly praised in the old picture, and is the one which the copy most conspicuously lacks, and which the copyist must not hope to compass. ”

“ Clearly our concept of the author and this concept of the copier are two sides of the same coin. If we think of an author as having a natural right to profit from his work, then we will think of the copier as some sort of thief; whereas if we think of the author as beneficiary of a statutory monopoly, it may be easier to see the copier as an embodiment of free enterprise values. ”

“ A copyright, dear sir Harry, is a legal right to a copy. Suppose you and your friend Delano, four doors away, should publish a book that proved as popular as—well, let us say Trilby, or Ben-Hur, or Uncle Tom's Cabin did. If you send out a few copies and put upon them no legal proprietary mark, other persons seeing the demand could and would take your work, make copies of it, sell them, pocket the money, and give you nothing for what perhaps cost you a great deal of effort. ”

“ Although copying to promote a scholarly endeavor certainly has a stronger claim to fair use than copying to avoid interrupting a poker game, the question is not simply two-dimensional. For one thing, it is not true that all copyrights are fungible. ”

“ A publisher copyrighted and brought out an 'arrangement,' made by an American musician, of a popular French waltz, christening it 'Manola Waltz.' A competitor republished it with scarcely any changes, and when the first publisher complained, 'Your waltz is only a copy of mine,' he answered, 'Yours is only a copy of the Frenchman's.' The judge said that a man need not be an original author—the sole creator of the work; the first publisher could fairly get a copyright for his arrangement' ”

“ There seems to be scarcely nothing worth copying that has not received full attention at the hands of the forger. Of course, when these copies are simply offered as reproductions of old pieces, the purchaser, even if he pays a large price, has not much to complain of, but the trouble arises when they are foisted on the public as genuine. ”

“ All copies are bad; because no painter who is worth a straw ever will copy. He will make a study of a picture he likes, for his own use, in his own way; but he won't and can't copy; whenever you buy a copy, you buy so much misunderstanding of the original, and encourage a dull person in following a business he is not fit for, besides increasing ultimately chances of mistake and imposture, and farthering, as directly as money [Pg 64] can farther, the cause of ignorance in all directions. You may, in fact, consider yourself as having purchased a certain quantity of mistakes ”

“ Beta: People could sell or rent copy machines and other things you need, right? By the way, if copying takes money and time, then people may come along and do it for others, right? What are those people called, that copy for others?
Teacher: Publishers?
Beta: Publishers.
Alpha: So what? The artist still gets nothing. Only your “publishers” and the factories that make those copy machines. ... That’s not fair!
Beta: Hmm, this is interesting. ... This planet by magic momentarily makes a work as famous as it is good, right? ”

“ But since the 1994 Campbell decision, as the appeals court noted, the fourth factor no longer is more important than the others. [32]
In assessing how copying affects the potential market or value of a work, courts will consider markets beyond journal subscriptions and book sales, such as the secondary market for article and book chapter reprints, and royalty or licensing fees. [33] Furthermore, not only will a court examine the market impact of the individual defendant’s copying, but also “whether unrestricted and widespread conduct of the sort engaged in by the defendant ... ”

“ And you paid for these very few moronic phrases, paid good hard credits for them. Now isn't it just as logical to protect owners of a phrase when somebody else uses it verbally?"
"But," said the man desperately, "I didn't want to violate the Copyright on Verbal Use. I didn't know that phrase was under Copyright. Who can keep track of them all? Every day, more phrases and expressions are under Copyright as somebody else's property. Why, first thing you know, there'll hardly be any words left to say."
"That isn't true," objected Dirdon. "Copyright Law on Verbal Use is a great boon to society. ”

“ It must be an ungrateful generation that, in its love of 'cheap copies,' can lose all regard for 'the dear originals.'
"That, whereas, your petitioner has sold sundry of his copyrights to certain publishers for a sum of money, he does not see how the public, which is only a larger firm, can justly acquire even a share in copyright, except by similar means—namely, by purchase or assignment. That the public having constituted itself by law the executor and legatee of the author, ought in justice, and according to practice in other cases, to take to his debts as well as his literary assets. ”

“ So although the people whose perspective I have taken—the copiers—may be denigrated as unoriginal plagiarists or thieves of others' work, still they are the ones who feel the immediate impact of our intellectual property laws. It affects what they may do, how they may speak, and how they may earn a living. ”

“ We also agree with the Court of Appeals that whether “a substantial portion of the infringing work was copied verbatim” from the copyrighted work is a relevant question, see id., at 565, for it may reveal a dearth of transformative character or purpose under the first factor, or a greater likelihood of market harm under the fourth; a work composed primarily of an original, particularly its heart, with little added or changed, is more likely to be a merely superseding use, fulfilling demand for the original. ”

“ The Supreme Court has explained that “the extent of permissible copying varies with the purpose and character of the use” and characterized the relevant inquiry as whether “‘the amount and substantiality of the portion used [’] ... are reasonable in relation to the purpose of the copying.” Campbell, 510 U.S. at 586–87 (quoting 17 U.S.C. § 107 (3) ) .
“ [A] finding of fair use is more likely when small amounts, or less important passages, are copied than when the copying is extensive, or encompasses the most important parts of the original.” ”

“ The copy-reader must transform the weak, rambling sentence into a firm, coherent statement with an emphatic beginning. For the trite, colorless word or phrase, he must substitute the fresh, picturesque one. The too figurative flights of exuberant fancy in one young reporter’s copy must be toned down, and the bald, prosaic narrative or description in another’s given life and interest. In short, the copy-reader’s work is constructive as well as critical; it is as important for him to rewrite and rearrange as to cut out and boil down. ”

“ Each proof-reader is assisted by a copy-holder who reads in a monotone everything in the copy including punctuation, capitalization, and paragraphing, so that the proof-reader may see whether or not the printed form corresponds exactly to the copy. In smaller offices editors and reporters read proof, comparing the printed form with the copy only when it is necessary. Every one who writes for publication should know how to correct proof, so that he may be able to do this work quickly and accurately when occasion demands it. ”

“ The Internet makes copying cheaper and does so on an unparalleled global scale. Therefore we must meet the greater danger of illicit copying with more expansive rights, harsher penalties, and expanded protections. True, as I pointed out before, some of these expansions may indeed have the practical effect of reducing rights that citizens thought they had, such as fair use, low- level noncommercial sharing among personal friends, resale, and so on. But without an increase in private property rights, cheaper copying will eat the heart out of our creative and cultural industries. ”

“ Paradoxical as it may seem, the mechanical corruptions of a stupid but faithful copyist may tell us more than the intelligent copyings of a less faithful one.
A nice question is how far any alteration of the text of the exemplar is compatible with fidelity. Is a scribe, who recognizes under a corruption the word certainly intended, to perpetuate the error of the exemplar? Considering the liability of corruption to breed corruption we can hardly blame him if he does not, and we may say that it is no derogation to his fides if he makes self-evident corrections. ”

“ For developers who want to guarantee perpetual open source access to their work, some licenses employ the concept of copyleft, a punning reference to “copyright.” Copyleft uses copyright's legal framework to guarantee continued open access to a software and its source code. This is done by requiring, as a condition of the license, that any derivative works also be distributed under the same licensing terms as the original. These copyleft licensing terms are also sometimes referred to as reciprocity or “share-alike” provisions. ”

“ Is the form in which we possess it practically the original form, or are we to postulate a series of successive redactions? I think that every one who has carefully [Pg 189] studied the variants given above must have been struck by the fact that in no case is the question one involving a variety of incident or even an alteration in sequence. It is the same story in every case, told in the same order, in the same words, only certain copies give a fuller and more coherent version than others. In fact, as I said above, the variations are the variations of the copyist, not of the compiler. ”

“ But for the present it passes on its road to the press into the hands of a fourth body, the “copy-readers,” whose duties in America correspond partially to part of the work fulfilled in this country by “sub-editors,” who do not enjoy however so much positive responsibility, as we should allow them here. The functions of a copy-reader are unpleasantly negative. The real power of judging the news and criticizing it lies above with the city-editor and the managing editor, officials only dimly shadowed in England. ”

“ The concept of transforming a work was explored in great detail by a federal appeals court in American Geophysical Union v. Texaco, [13] which is discussed below.
The second fair use factor is the nature of the work copied. Because the purpose of copyright is to “promote the progress of science and the useful arts,” there is more freedom to copy or otherwise use informational, scientific, or factual works than there is for creative or expressive works. ”

“ By § 4964 it is provided, as to books, that those who print, publish, dramatize, translate, or import the same, without the consent of the proprietor of the copyright signed in the presence of two witnesses, or who, knowing the same to be so printed, published, dramatized, and translated or imported, shall sell, or expose to sale any copies of such article, shall forfeit every copy thereof to the proprietor of the copyright, and shall also forfeit and pay such damages as may be recovered in a civil action by the proprietor of the copyright in any court of competent jurisdiction. ”

“ I presume that all my readers know the meaning of the word copyright. A man's copyright, or right in his copy, is that amount of legal possession in the production of his brains which has been secured to him by the laws of his own country and by the laws of others. ”

“ Tradition has equipped the editor with a blue pencil and has made it a symbol of editorial callousness. In reality, the copy reader is much more likely to use a soft black pencil with which a word may be cut out at a single stroke or an illuminating word inserted in broad, unmistakable characters. The copy reader takes the story as it comes from the reporter and puts it through a refining process. His work is critical rather than creative. It is destructive so far as errors of grammar, violations172 of news style and libel are concerned. ”

“ Your picture is an original Bronzino, worth quite enough to free you from all the difficulties brought about by the bank. Any copyist who could do such work could expend his time more profitably on a picture of his own. Besides, it’s a tour de force in colouring that no sane copyist would dream of imitating. ”

“ It is easy to convey an imperfect book, by a distant hand, to the press, and plead the circulation of a false copy, as an excuse for publishing the true, or to correct what is found faulty or offensive, and charge the errours on the transcriber's depravations. ”

“ Would an editor attempt to bind everybody who purchased his work to the condition, to be accused of embezzling the property of another entrusted to him, if, either intentionally, or by the purchaser's lack of oversight, the copy which the purchaser purchased were used for the purpose of counterfeiting? ”

“ Today, the fact that a work is out-of-print may work for, or against, fair use. That a work is out-of-print may work in favor of the copyright owner because royalties from copying are the only source of income from the work. ”

“ The commercial/nonprofit dichotomy concerns the unfairness that arises when a secondary user makes unauthorized use of copyrighted material to capture significant revenues as a direct consequence of copying the original work. ”

“ Accordingly, “copyright law celebrates the profit motive, recognizing that the incentive to profit from the exploitation of copyrights will redound to the public benefit by resulting in the proliferation of knowledge.... The profit motive is the engine that ensures the progress of science.” ”