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"Preface" [2019] ELECD 2357; in Reed, S. Christopher (ed), "The Unrealized Promise of the Next Great Copyright Act" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) vii

Book Title: The Unrealized Promise of the Next Great Copyright Act

Editor(s): Reed, S. Christopher

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section Title: Preface

Number of pages: 3

Extract:

Preface
Many believe that U.S. copyright law is, in many ways, severely outdated.
Although the core principles of the law remain valid -- that is, a set of exclu-
sive rights to expressive works offset by series of measured limitations and
exceptions for certain socially desirable uses -- the specific provisions that
animate those principles largely date back to the mid-1970s, long before the
advent of digital production and distribution technologies that have become
commonplace today. The law was updated in 1998 with the passage of the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), an attempt to address new issues
raised by emerging networking technologies. But Congress could not possibly
have envisioned what the modern, commercialized internet has become, much
less consider how it would affect copyright interests. Indeed, even the DMCA
is today showing signs of its age.
While the practice of producing and distributing creative expression, and
the business environment that supports it, have evolved along with technology,
the copyright law that undergirds it all has remained largely static. While the
courts have attempted to fill in the gaps by applying extant law to new situa-
tions ­ primarily fair use ­ their interpretations have increasingly contorted the
law to achieve socially desirable, case-specific outcomes without much appar-
ent regard to how those decisions impact the broader copyright scheme -- an
analysis that is more properly undertaken by Congress.
As a result of this congressional inattention and courts' attempts at making
it up as they go along, copyright has become a functional ...