Word: copyrights
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Press freedom outweighs an ex-President's copyright...
...leftist weekly, summarized Ford's account of his pardon of Richard Nixon, using a stolen copy of the book without Ford's permission. A U.S. district court ruled that the Nation had taken the former President's work in violation of the federal copyright laws, and directed the magazine to pay the publishers damages of $12,500; the sum represented the fee that the publishers lost when TIME, which had purchased first magazine publication rights, withdrew under a contractual provision after the Nation article appeared...
...widely followed case pitted the right to literary ownership, or copyright, against the principle of a free press. Copyright, said Kaufman, covers not "ideas or facts," but the author's "expression." In the case of highly newsworthy books, this means only "the ordering and choice of the words themselves." Otherwise, he went on, "an individual could be the owner of an important political event merely by being the first to depict that event in words." Copyright law "was not meant to obstruct the citizens' access to vital facts and historical observations about our nation's life...
Kaufman noted that Editor Victor Navasky of the Nation had paraphrased most of what Ford wrote. Only 300 words of the 2,250-word article were taken verbatim from the manuscript. This brief borrowing of copyrighted material without the author's consent, said the court, was "fair use," a concept that allows limited quotation by journalists, critics, teachers and researchers. Dissenting Judge Thomas Meskill found a problem in the straightforward nature of the paraphrasing, however. "Copyright laws protect originality," he wrote. "They thus offer protection against a work that is substantially an unoriginal appropriation of the copyrighted work...
...jubilant Navasky hailed the ruling as "a victory for the public." But some legal experts contend that the decision's scope might not be as broad as Kaufman's resounding language suggests. The reigning scholar of copyright law, Melville Nimmer of U.C.L.A. law school, said the "essential element" in the case is that "the underlying material is factual." Paraphrasing of fictional material would still violate copyright laws. Columbia Law Professor Benno Schmidt also did not quarrel with the decision but added, "The appropriate principles of copyright protection got bent out of shape by the tremendous newsworthiness...