Does (or Should) the First Amendment Trump Copyright?

摘要

I want to begin this review essay with a biographical note, because Inam known through my writings and speeches mainly as a long-timendefender of copyright, and thus it might appear that I bring to mynreview of this book a prejudicial perspective. But since childhood I havenalways felt strongly about the First Amendment, too, and wrote letters tonthe editor defending freedom of speech and freedom of the press when Inwas still a teenager. The tensions between copyright law and the FirstnAmendment were brought home to me very vividly when I served innthe mid-1980s on both the Copyright and the Freedom to Read Com-nmittees of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), which hadnlong debates over the issues raised in the landmark Supreme Court casenof Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises (1985). So I did not begin readingnthis book with a bias in favour of intellectual property against the FirstnAmendment. The authors’ own bias in reverse, however, did make menmore defensive about copyright than I might otherwise have been, Inmust admit.