Intended Audience
Librarian
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Date Created
2001
Description
"This paper is divided into three parts. The first part explores why, at least with regard to the use of unpublished materials, current interpretations of copyright law have become an impediment to creative endeavors rather than an encouragement to them. I will argue that two factors are at work. The first factor that is making it harder for archivists to copy unpublished materials and for scholars to use them is that we are imposing on unpublished materials a set of rules and viewpoints meant to govern published material. As is becoming painfully apparent, the fit does not work very well. The second factor that has made the use of unpublished material more problematic is the rise of the Internet and the ease with which people can uncover potential infringing acts. Technology has not changed the law, but it has affected how people interpret the law – with potentially disastrous results as far as unpublished material is concerned." - Peter Hirtle
Format
Article
Recommended Citation
Peter B. Hirtle,
"Unpublished Materials, New Technologies, and Copyright: Facilitating Scholarly Use"
(January 1, 2001).
A repository of copyright educational resources for higher education.
Element 12.
https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/cheer/library/all_crlibrary/12
Unpublished Materials, New Technologies, and Copyright: Facilitating Scholarly Use
"This paper is divided into three parts. The first part explores why, at least with regard to the use of unpublished materials, current interpretations of copyright law have become an impediment to creative endeavors rather than an encouragement to them. I will argue that two factors are at work. The first factor that is making it harder for archivists to copy unpublished materials and for scholars to use them is that we are imposing on unpublished materials a set of rules and viewpoints meant to govern published material. As is becoming painfully apparent, the fit does not work very well. The second factor that has made the use of unpublished material more problematic is the rise of the Internet and the ease with which people can uncover potential infringing acts. Technology has not changed the law, but it has affected how people interpret the law – with potentially disastrous results as far as unpublished material is concerned." - Peter Hirtle
Comments
Article published in the Journal of the Copyright Society of the USA 49:1 (Fall, 2001). Also available at eCommons@Cornell: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/58