There are times when Americans have a shortsighted view of historyand accountability, in particular, when ignoring the demands of thoseclaiming compensation or special favors today for some injustice in thepast, for example the case of African Americans and past racialdiscrimination. Often these demands are brushed off by saying that suchinjustices, while regrettable, would be compounded by a present-day“injustice” (such as racial hiring quotas) to remedy theprior injustice.
A similar controversy involves copyright of American publicationsand media, and the piracy of such materials in foreign countries,particularly developing countries. Large corporate owners of suchmaterials have been known to use their clout to get the federalgovernment to press developing countries to crack down on the piracy ofcopyrighted American materials and, in some cases, to lobby globalforums to establish new rights protecting such material.
The message being sent to these countries is that they have tobecome developed countries while respecting all of the rules, at leastin the area of copyrights. It is a message that can be viewed ashypocritical, at least in light of the author’s review of the history ofcopyright piracy in the United States while the United States was stilla “developing” country. Given the importance of copyright inan era of global publishing on the Internet, one can ask if the UnitedStates position is hypocritical or unfair.
As the author points out, from the Copyright Act of 1790 (shortlyafter the country was established) until the Chace Act of 1891 (whichenabled reciprocal copyright agreements to be established with othernations), the United States was a “copyright haven.” Acopyright haven is a polite phrase for piracy; that is, to quote theauthor,
The term “copyright haven” is the standard historicalterm used to refer to the legal exclusion of foreign and nonresidentauthors from copyright protection in this period. In contrast to thephrase “copyright piracy,” it emphasizes the legallysanctioned nature of this exclusion. It also avoids prejudgments, whichmight obscure historical insight, as to the morality or legitimacy ofthe practice.
The author first reviews the history of America’s being a copyrighthaven, its importance while we were developing, and its becoming aliability the more equivalent we became to Europe, at which pointAmerica was producing enough copyrighted material worthy of overseasprotection to therefore make it worthwhile to start respecting foreigncopyrights, an attitude that led to the Chace Act.
The author then goes on to compare 19th-century UnitedStates with 20th-century China:
First, there are interesting if uncomfortable, analogies betweenthe 19th century United States as a copyright haven and late 20thcentury China as an exploiter of United States produced videos, CDs andcomputer software without observing copyright.…T he general lackof references to the United States as a copyright haven in thesediscussions [of intellectual property relations between the US andChina], combined with a rather moralistic tone, does give the impressionof a collective forgetting or repression.
I strongly recommend that you read the full paper, not only as awell-written paper on the historical interactions between technologicaldevelopment and copyright laws, but as a good reminder that modernquestions of ethics have historical aspects that cannot fairly beignored. Can America ask developing countries not to take advantage ofan opportunity that America took while it was a developing country?However you stand on this issue, this paper is worth reading.
