Preface to the Second Edition

In the five years since I began work on the first edition (entitled Copyright and Trademark for Media Professionals), much has happened to the world of copyrights and trademarks. I wanted to explore some of the tensions that led to reform as well as explain the changes that occurred and their impact on intellectual property rights in a second edition. Most notably, Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the most comprehensive law reform in a generation, and extended the term of copyrights 20 years. On behalf of five national library associations, I was able to play a role in the passage of legislation that will shape the treatment of digital content by copyright law for years to come. The legislation not only established new rules to address the problems for online service providers like AOL and the telephone companies, but it also introduced several new legal concepts, including a prohibition on the circumvention of technological measures designed to control access to works.

Left hanging in the balance was the relationship of the Internet to distance education, the method by which the students log on and learn. The complex issues of distance education were the subject of intense debate during consideration of the DMCA, with no formal resolution occurring in 1998. It took a report from the Copyright Office and leadership by two committed senators to fashion a compromise that all interested parties have agreed to. This reform has the prospect of having an enormous impact on education in the coming years. However, the final bill is so complex in structure and language that educators, students, and content owners will need guidance in how to interpret its standards.

During the past five years, the Internet has burst fully onto the scene, cresting a veritable revolution, not only in the way people communicate but also in the approach to ownership and use of content. A metaphor for the change is the story of Napster, the extraordinary music file-sharing technology that attracted upward of 40 million (mainly youthful) users by early 2000. These music hunters appeared oblivious to the concerns of copyright owners of recordings that were being shared without any recompense to those copyright owners. The fact that the price of CDs offended the sensibilities of many teenage buyers made Napster a natural ally of those who believed that traditional copyright law could not apply in cyberspace. However, after a legal assault based on very old-fashioned notions of ownership and exclusive rights, the upstart was brought to its knees.

The dot-coms also brought change to the world of trademark. The ease with which one could apply for and obtain a Web address made specious claims to words and phrases a simple method to attract online users to their sites. New systems for deciding conflicting claims to www.xxx.coms were instituted, including a mechanism for international arbitration to resolve cross-border disputes. All this happened amid the frantic boom and bust of Internet stocks on the NASDAQ.

Also, I wanted this book to appeal to a wider circle of readers. While the first edition focused throughout on media professionals, I believe that the topics and contents can have utility and interest for many others. Freelance authors, photographers, librarians, and educators (teachers, administrators, and students), in particular, need a better understanding of how the law of intellectual property affects their work and their thinking.

So, at the start of the new millennium, I decided to return to the topic of copyrights and trademarks. This edition has a new and more accessible title, Content Rights for the Creative Professional. My goal is to help professionals—those serious about the creation or use of works, words, phrases, and images, and the translation of ideas into form and substance—discover what they need to know about their ownership and use and give them the tools to apply in practice. Novels and short stories, biographies and news articles, photographs and drawings, films and multimedia works, sculptures and paintings, songs and dances, words, logos, and catchphrases are the subjects of our work.

The book is an update, not a total rewrite. It discusses many of the important changes of the past few years and offers new, practical features like a glossary, helpful hints, and some visuals. Also included is a CD-ROM with full text of relevant laws, cases, and original source materials to help those wishing to explore issues in greater detail. Let the games begin!