BEFORE THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY SUBCOMMITTEE ON COURTS, INELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND THE INTERNET -- HEARING ON INNOVATION IN AMERICA: THE ROLE OF COPYRIGHTS STATEMENT OF THE LIBRARY COPYRIGHT ALLIANCE
abernard102@gmail.com 2013-07-27
Summary:
Use the link to access the full text document opening as follows: "The Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) consists of three major library associations—the American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries, and the Association of Research Libraries—that collectively represent over 100,000 libraries in the United States employing over 350,000 librarians and other personnel. LCA requests that this statement be included in the record of this hearing.
The subject of this hearing is the role of copyright law in promoting innovation in the United States. The starting point for understanding this relationship is the differentiation between the entertainment industry and other fields where copyrighted content is produced. Similarly, the creators of copyrighted content must be differentiated from the distributors of the content. Unfortunately, in copyright policy discussions, these distinctions often are overlooked. In this statement, LCA focuses on these distinctions. First, it discusses the diminishing role of copyright in incentivizing activity in one of the
most important sources of innovation in the U.S. economy: scholarly communications. LCA then discusses the economic importance of collaborative activities such as open source software and Wikipedia, which do not rely on the incentive provided by copyright. Finally, with respect to sectors that do appear to rely on copyright, LCA points out that
many of the leading firms in those sectors are foreign owned. This suggests that the importance of copyright to maintaining U.S. leadership in the global economy may be overstated ... "