I am not a fan of 17 USC 106(1), aka the exclusive right of reproduction, aka the right to make copies. I've written that copyright should be exclusively concerned with two things: 1) The scope of the copyright (what can be copyrighted, how far the copyright extends, such as derivative works); and, 2) The breadth of copyright (the exclusive rights at issue). For the breadth of copyright, I argue that what we are really concerned with is the public distribution of works and everything else is unimportant. Of course, I classify public performance, public display, etc., as form of public distribution. See, Taking the Copy Out of Copyright [PDF].

One of the problems with the right of reproduction is that it gives too much control over how a work can be used and inhibits many otherwise excellent and beneficial business models.

Case in point, Google's plan to digitize libraries and make them subject to search. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, many publishers are planning on putting Google into legal hotwater over this plan (Publishing Groups Say Google's Library-Scanning Effort May Violate Copyright Laws):

But the company also plans to scan copyrighted books in some of the libraries. The search engine will not give users the full texts of those volumes, but will provide up to three short excerpts, each consisting of only a few lines of text in which a search term appears. Google officials say that such limited use will not violate copyright law.

But some publishing-industry officials say that even scanning a book and offering brief excerpts without the publishers' permission could violate copyright because scanning the book would represent a reproduction of the work, and the copying would have been done by a commercial entity rather than the library that purchased the book.

Is the purpose of copyright law to prevent the creation of really efficient indexes without paying a licensing fee? What part of "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" does this really help? Sure, one might claim the copyright owner will make more money, but it isn't clear to me that such arguments take into account all the positive externalities good, cheap indexes create. Finding information is a critically important aspect of making sure information is disseminated (which seems to be the point of the copyright clause).

This post also inaugurates a new section for this blog: network law. These are posts that deal with what I consider to be the law of distribution of information: copyright, telecomm and freedom of the press.