Just as large-scale economic forces are causing gentrification of our cities and the elimination of public spaces that allow culture and politics to flourish, powerful economic interests have also launched a full-scale attack on our public information spaces, many of which exist on the Internet. This article uses the disappearance of public spaces in our cities as a metaphor for the disappearance of public spaces in cyberspace. It focuses on the Content Industry's use of copyright law to assault the public domain and their attempt to turn all information into commodities. And it discusses the horrific implications of all of this on free speech, artistic endeavors, and our entire way of life.
 

Public spaces have played a fundamental role throughout history. From the time that humans first defined private spaces, public spaces have served as places where people have come together to exchange ideas. From the ancient Greek's Agora to the Middle Ages' Commons to early 20^th century American urban streets and parks, public spaces have been centers for free speech and public discourse.

Historically, the public spaces of cities have been centers of diversity. Even when housing was segregated along class or ethnic lines, public spaces were where people from all kinds of different backgrounds were exposed to each other. City streets, parks, and public transportation were melting pots of cultural differences, places where one would encounter people who dressed and spoke differently, hear people expressing opinions that one would never hear amongst their "peers", see people engaged in activities one had never seen before. The diversity that people were exposed to in these public spaces was eye-opening, and led them to new ideas and to see beyond their insular world. In their book on the negative effect of the automobile on our cities, Safdie and Kohn discuss the vitality of public spaces in cities before cars took over:

Public spaces are important for diversity and free speech, as well as for the exchange of ideas. The exposure to differences that takes place there helps new ideas germinate. Public spaces are important to the creative process.
 

The latter half of the 20^th century saw the rapid decline of intermingling in public spaces. The growth of the suburbs removed people from inner-city streets to low-density neighborhoods -- usually having a very narrow socioeconomic and ethnic make-up. The growth of the automobile removed people from the melting-pot of public transportation, and put them in an isolated metal chamber almost every time they left their homes.

With the rise of the suburbs we saw the creation of pseudo-public spaces that looked like public spaces on one level, but had key elements of public spaces stripped away. These pseudo-public spaces include Malls, theme parks, and sports stadiums. A pseudo-public space resembles a public space with its diversity of people. But Malls, stadiums, and theme parks are privatized spaces that are "sanitized" of certain elements. Attempts to control free speech in public spaces pale in comparison to the success of pseudo-public spaces in controlling speech. For example, most Malls prohibit leafleting or making speeches. Mall security guards routinely remove homeless people as well as anyone wearing what they deem to be gang colors. As a private space, Malls can control speech and looks. They can "sanitize" their environment. And they can prohibit activities that do not lead to their raison d'etre -- consuming commodities.

The last quarter of the 20^th century saw a rapid disappearance of privacy in public spaces. While public spaces never afforded the privacy of homes, people have traditionally felt that they can do things in public without being monitored or tracked. And even though certain individuals might observe a person's single particular action, that person would still have expectations that they were only observed for brief moments and would feel that s/he could be "lost in the crowd". But in the last 25 years we've seen an enormous growth in devices to not only monitor but to record an individual in public as well as pseudo-public spaces. Cameras that were first installed in banks ostensibly to identify robbery suspects are now commonplace in all types of stores and throughout pseudo-public spaces like Malls. And in early 2001 it was revealed that every person entering the Superbowl had their photograph secretly taken and compared to an image database of "known suspects" (Slevin 2001). Cameras have flooded real public spaces as well -- being mounted on lamp-posts to fight crime, on public transportation to prohibit muggings, and at intersections to catch signal-jumpers. There are fewer and fewer public spaces devoid of monitoring cameras. And in coming years, a person's movements through both public and private spaces will be monitored through the global positioning systems (GPS) within their cellphones.

The monitoring and recording of people in public and pseudo-public spaces is likely to have a chilling effect on free speech and the expression of controversial views. For example, someone who would publicly castigate a government agency (such as the police or IRS) might fear retaliation if his/her statement were recorded. And awareness that one is being recorded is likely to affect other types of diversity as well (for instance, many people who anticipate being recorded will dress or groom themselves in a more conventional way than if they know they're not being recorded).

As public spaces disappear and as we see invasive recording entering both public and pseudo-public spaces, we're likely to see a diminishment of: free speech, diversity, and the creativity that comes from exposure to new ideas.
 

Since the earliest days of the personal computer, this technology was seen as a vehicle to restore disappearing public spaces. Lee Felsenstein, one of the founders of the personal computer, advocated using this new tool to restore an information commons (Felsenstein). Felsenstein and many of his fellow personal computing pioneers envisioned that the Internet could provide a vast public space that would reflect diverse interests and encourage free speech and creativity.

For many years popular discourse framed the Internet as a diverse free speech zone where "anyone can be a creator". But in the early days of the WorldWide Web, public areas of the Internet became increasingly walled-off. In 1994 this author warned of the "colonizing effect" that commercial interests would have on the public space that the Internet then represented (Besser 1994). And in 1995 he discussed how control by large industries would supercede the public benefit and diversity aspects that the Internet had promised. Almost a decade later, we see Internet spaces increasingly fenced off, and peoples' actions increasingly tracked and recorded.

Much could be written about the various ways in which today diversity, free speech, and public spaces are disappearing. The remainder of this article focuses on just one particular area in which this is happening -- the disappearing information commons both online and in print due to the assertion of strong intellectual property rights. In the not-too-distant future, the raw material that 'zines and magazines (such as Processed World) recontextualize will be difficult if not impossible to use. Technological protection mechanisms combined with severe changes in copyright law will make it increasingly difficult to use drawings, photographs, and clip-art without first paying for permission to use it.

In the past several years we have seen a major effort aimed at overhauling intellectual property law. Under the guise of responding to the challenge posed by the increasing amount of information in digital form, the content industry (publishers, motion picture studios, music distributors, etc.) has engaged in a veritable assault on long-standing public interest practices. In what law professor Pam Samuelson has termed the "Copyright Grab" (Samuelson), the content industry is exploiting concerns over digitization and attempting to reshape the law by strengthening protection for copyrightsholders and weakening public rights to access and use material.

In the remainder of this article, the author first examines intellectual property lawís origins as an attempt to create a public good. He then discusses how both the advent of digital technology and the consolidation of control in the hands of the content industry have created new structural and economic conditions for intellectual property. He shows how the content industry has in the past tried to exploit changing underlying conditions in a effort to strengthen their ownership rights, and demonstrates how they are doing that again in the current environment. Finally, he cites the threat to "social good" from the content industryís continuing success at reshaping public policy.
 

Though many copyright holders view copyright as an "economic right" that protects their ability to make money off content, US copyright law was actually established to promote the "public good" by encouraging the production and distribution of content. Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution states:

Underpinning much of the recent rhetoric by the "content industry" is a view of copyright as an unlimited economic right. This logic is misguided since the economic rights granted by copyright are just a byproduct of attempts to fulfill the societal need to increase creativity. Though it granted Congress the power to give creators monopoly control over their creations, the Constitution was careful to set controls on that monopoly by stating that it could only endure for "limited times".
 

Prior to the "digital age" a delicate balance had emerged between copyright holders on the one hand, and the general public on the other hand. Copyright holders had certain exclusive rights over their material, but those rights were tempered by access rights held by the public. The three most important public rights were the public domain, fair use, and first sale.

Copyright has always been just a temporary monopoly, and by Constitutional edict it can only last for a "limited time." When a copyright expires, the work enters the public domain. The public domain is a diverse unregulated public space. Anyone can draw on material in the public domain for any purpose whatsoever. Unlike material under copyright, no one can charge me for using the public domain or prevent me from using public domain material in a way that might offend someone. A rich public domain has allowed creativity to flourish. Because Romeo and Juliet is in the public domain, we can have a wide variety of creative interpretations of this work (from one set in contemporary Mexico to West Side Story), all without having to get permission from a copyright holder (who would not only charge for the use, but would also likely limit creative use that the holder didn't like). The public domain is a critical public space that is an essential part of both education and creativity.

Fair Use (a common practice which was codified into law in Section 107 of the 1976 Copyright Law) limits a copyright holderís monopoly over the use of his/her work by permitting copying under a limited set of circumstances for uses such as education, private study, and satire. The fair use doctrine assumes that these types of uses constitute a compelling enough social good that even if a copyright holder wanted to prevent such uses of their material, the law would not support them. It is fair use that allows students to photocopy copyrighted articles for personal use, teachers to read excerpts from copyrighted works in class, reviewers to quote from copyrighted works in their published reviews, and satirists to incorporate portions of copyrighted works into their satires.

The First Sale doctrine limits a rightsholderís control over a copy of a work to the very first time that copy is sold. According to first sale, anyone who purchases a work can then do what they want with that copy, even if the rightsholder opposes that use. First sale allows the purchaser of a work to resell it, lend it, share it, or destroy it -- without ever consulting the rightsholder. Among other social benefits, the first sale doctrine has permitted libraries, used bookstores, and used record stores to operate without having to consult with a rightsholder each time they lend or sell a work.
 

The content industry fears that fair use and first sale in the digital age will cause them to lose significant control over their copyrighted content, threatening their profits. Because a digital work is so easy to copy, many rightsholders fear that fair use will provide a loophole for individuals who wish to redistribute a work to others. They also fear that first sale will permit their first buyer to redistribute a work for free, ruining the rightsholderís market and destroying authorship incentives. These fears have been the rationale stated by the content industry in their attempts to press for legislation which would virtually eliminate fair use and first sale in the digital world.

Here we will deal with two problems with the content industryís position: (1) that in the past they have raised the specter of massive financial loss due to copying, yet history has proved their fears groundless; and (2) that even if the content industry faces loss of control in the digital age, the legal changes they have come up with will result in an immense loss for the public, and tip the delicate balance of copyright law firmly on the side of the content industry.

When home videorecorders were first introduced in the United States in 1975, the content industry feared that these would be used for massive copyright infringement. In 1976 key members of the content industry (Walt Disney Productions and Universal City Studios) filed suit in US District Court requesting an injunction against the manufacture and marketing of Betamax videorecorders. They contended that these machines would cause them significant financial harm because individuals could use them for copying their intellectual property. A series of litigation followed, culminating in a 1984 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Sony Corporation of America et al. v. Universal City Studios, Inc. et al.). This landmark decision recognized home videorecording as a fair use, and allowed Sony to continue marketing the machines (Bettig, Home Recording Rights Coalition, Marlow, Lardner).

In the course of litigation, representatives of the content industry strongly supported the Universal/Disney position. Jack Valenti, President of the Motion Picture Association of America, called the Betamax a "parasitical" device (Lardner, page 115). He claimed that VCRs posed significant threats to the film industryís markets:

• because people who subscribed to cable television could record off the air and lend these to friends, very few people would subscribe to cable and cable TV would dry up
• because people could tape off the air then fast-forward through commercials, TV advertising revenues would tumble
• if people could tape movies off the air and watch them at home for free, they would stop going to movie theaters, and the studios would face financial hardship (Bettig, pages 169-170)

In the past four years, legislators shaping intellectual property law for the digital age have heard vociferous testimony from the content industry concerning their fears of tremendous revenue losses unless copyright laws are tightened. Most of the proposed legislation has responded directly to these fears in ways that will effectively eliminate fair use and first sale in the digital age. Public interest coalitions (including libraries, educational institutions, and consumer groups) have asserted that legislation in the digital age should maintain the kind of balance between rightsholders and the public interest that existed with analog material, rather than tip this balance significantly towards the content industry. Attempts to remedy perceived threats to rightsholdersí profits create severe threats to public interests that have traditionally been protected by fair use and first sale.

Fair use is a powerful tool for both education and social commentary. This concept allows teachers to present small portions of a work for class discussion, and reviewers to quote from a work without obtaining permission from the rightsholder. Fair use also permits the repurposing and recontextualization of a work for the purpose of parody or social comment. Re-using something for a purposes other than its original intention is a fundamental part of creativity. Kids dress up and play-act in clothes made for grown-ups, they use tin cans for telephones, and they create collages from magazine photos and articles. Creative adults constantly repurpose content in a wide variety of social commentary situations (from rap music sampling, to Processed World collage illustrations, to postmodern art). The elimination of fair use would not only hurt education and social welfare, but could stifle the very creativity and content production that copyright was intended to foster. It would also drastically alter the delicate balance between rightsholders and information users.

Attempts to eliminate the first sale doctrine in the digital age raise even more critical issues. A key aspect of first sale has prevented the rightsholder of intellectual property from completely controlling who has access to it and how it is used. Though a publisher, newspaper, or Hollywood studio in the analog world might limit the audience for an initial set of sales, someone buying the work could turn around and sell it to anyone else. But in proposed digital age legislation, the purchaser of a work could not legally sell it or give it away without permission from the rightsholder. In a world without first sale:

• publishers could refuse to distribute to unfriendly critics
• organizations could prevent gadflies or consumer groups from viewing documents that might be used to paint them in unflattering terms
• authors could prevent known satirists from getting copies of their works
• libraries would not be able to lend works

The framers of the US Constitution envisioned intellectual property law as guaranteeing a set of temporary monopoly rights to individuals -- "authors and inventors" to encourage the production of new works. Intervening economic changes have created the current situation in which individuals who create intellectual property have not had the resources or channels of distribution to disseminate their creations. Today, most creators have little choice but to sell their copyright to corporations who then disseminate these works. (For example, an individual author might have a hard time financing the printing of his/her book, but even if able to do so, s/he would not be able to distribute copies to bookstores without a major publisher or distributor. So the author is forced to sell the copyright to a publisher in exchange for printing, distribution, and a small portion of the profits.) For the most part, copyrights are not held by individuals, but by corporate entities who are part of the content industry. The content industry would argue that strengthening their position allows them to provide greater incentives to individual creators, but many creators vociferously challenge that notion (Tasini). Strengthening copyright laws does improve the position of the content industry by giving them a relatively untempered monopoly over content, but it does so at the expense of the public good. And it does little to encourage the creation of new content.

Proposed legislation that would turn copyright laws into economic guarantees for the copyright holders is just the most recent in a series of attempts by the content industry to tilt the balance in their favor. If content providers have their way, intellectual property use will move away from domains that have at least some provision for public good and social benefit (such as fair use and first sale) -- and move these dealings into arenas where only economic relationships apply.

The "limited time" duration of copyright guaranteed that works would relatively quickly enter the public domain. This provision was instrumental in ensuring that the law promoted the creation of new works, rather than the extraction of profits from content. The duration of a copyright guarantee has increased over time (see chart A). A 1709 law set copyright for 14 years. Prior to 1976, copyright was granted for 28 years and renewable for another 28 years. The 1976 Copyright Act increased the term to 75 years, and the 1998 Sonny Bono Term Extension Act increased the term still further -- to 95 years for corporations and 70 years after death for individuals.
 

Year	Copyright Duration
1709 (British)	14 years
pre-1976 (US)	28 years + 28 year renewal
1976 (US)	75 years (corporate) life + 50 years (individual)
1998 (US)	95 years (corporate) life + 70 years (individual)

Chart A: Copyright Duration

After intense lobbying and public relations efforts, members of the content industry have indicated that they would like to see the public domain completely eliminated. In fact, provisions within the 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act took works that had fallen into the public domain and put these back under copyright. The 2 companion 1998 copyright acts have taken a wide variety of materials that should be entering the public domain very soon, and placed these back under copyright control for at least another 20 years (which gives the content industry plenty of time to extend copyright for still another 20 years). Songs like Irving Berlin's Blue Skies, Harry Woods' When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob Bobbin' Along, and Hammerstein and Kern's Ol' Man River and Showboat should all have entered the public domain next year, yet the new laws will place these all under copyright control for at least another 20 years. Stories by Virginia Wolf, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ben Hecht, Rudyard Kipling, P. G. Wodehouse, and Zane Grey have also been eliminated from the public domain for at least another 20 years.

Some content industry promoters defend their encroachments on the public domain by contending that the new economic models of the digital age will eliminate the need for a public domain. They contend that maintaining copyright in perpetuity allows them to create "micro-payment" delivery systems that will allow anyone to access older content for just a few pennies for each use. Their position fails to take into consideration that copyright is as much about control as it is about access, and that under the system they propose, rightsholders will still be able to prevent uses that they do not like. Following their logic would turn the public domain into a controlled pseudo-public space where information is clearly a commodity to be bought and sold.

This lengthening of copyright duration flies in the face of the Constitutional limitation on copyright which granted Congress the right to institute copyright protections, but only for limited times. The Constitutionally mandated goal of copyright is to encourage the production of new works, both by guaranteeing creators some exclusivity for a limited time, and by making sure that there is a robust public domain of copyright-free material that creators can draw on and incorporate into new works. It is absurd to think that 75 or 95 years is a "limited time", and even more absurd to rationalize that exclusive rights lasting beyond oneís lifetime would provide incentives that would encourage a creator to create more works.

In a February 1998 editorial, the New York Times (itself a major content-holder that benefits from strong copyright legislation) sharply criticized the extensions of copyright duration that have since become law.

Proposed database extraction legislation would apply copyright to an entire database, and start the copyright duration clock ticking every time a new item was added to the database. Under the proposed legislation, every time an online collection of text or images added a new work to their database, it would extend the copyright duration term for anything that was extracted from their database. This would allow a database provider to create a perpetual copyright (by adding something new to the database every 90 years), preventing items in the database from ever entering the public domain. This legislation died in the 1998 Congress, but will be reintroduced in 1999 with strong backing from the content industry.
 
 

Recent attempts to overhaul the copyright law have been prompted by strong lobbying efforts from the "content industry". The content industry was one of the leading supporters of Clintonís first campaign for the presidency, and after taking office Clinton appointed former copyright industry lobbyist Bruce Lehman as Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks. Lehman was given the task of managing efforts to overhaul the nationís intellectual property laws, and he was the driving force behind the Administrationís green paper and white paper recommendations on major changes to intellectual property laws (Samuelson).

As copyright legislation was passing through Congress, content industry lobbyists aggressively courted Congresspeople. The Association of American Publisers (AAP) hired former Congresswoman Pat Shroeder to head their organization and act as chief spokesperson. In the 1996 election, the content industry had already donated over $11 million to congressional campaigns, split fairly evenly between Democrats and Republicans (Makinson). In the early part of the 1998 campaign (while copyright legislation was being debated in Congress), Hollywood connected donors gave more than $1.3 million to congressional campaigns (Mother Jones 400). The content industry also waged a strong public relations campaign, claiming that the American economy would suffer irreparable harm if copyright controls were not tightened. After the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and the Sonny Bono Term Extension Act finally passed through Congress, an Associated Press story revealed that Disney had lobbied hard for the new law (particularly portions which extended copyright protection for an additional 20 years) because Disneyís copyright over characters such as Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and Donald Duck were due to expire soon (Salant). Not surprisingly, a week after the Digital Millenium Copyright Act was signed into law, Bruce Lehman resigned his Administration post, having accomplished most of what he set out to do on behalf of the content industry.

For the past decade, most publishers have refused to sell material in digital form to libraries. Instead, they require libraries to license this material. Licenses are contractual arrangements, and publishers claim that rights such as fair use do not apply to these arrangements. This has put publishers on such a collision course with librarians, that AAP president Pat Shroeder regards librarians as the enemy. "Publishers want to charge people to read material; librarians want to give it away." (Weeks)

Under licensing schemes, material is leased rather than bought outright. This raises a myriad of concerns for libraries. Licenses are only for a limited number of years, and at the end of that period license fees may be raised drastically or, if the market isnít large enough, the material may be eliminated altogether. The licensor may eliminate particular items for economic reasons or because they are controversial, making it very difficult for a library to build collections or to maintain a historical record of the resources they have made available.

Site licenses of digital works of art can cause particular problems for faculty and students who build curricular or creative materials that incorporate these works. Faculty and students are hesitant to spend the extensive time needed to create new digital materials incorporating licensed digital images unless they can be sure that the campus license (and each individual image that was originally part of it) will continue in perpetuity, and that they can take their creations with them when they leave the campus. Faculty sabbaticals at another campus, faculty or students taking positions elsewhere, or even showing a portfolio to a potential employer would all be prohibited by most licensing agreements. This is a central problem to any type of licensing agreement; if a licensor did in fact choose to offer guarantees of continuity, that licensor would run the risk of a university deciding to cancel their license payments yet still maintain the continuity of access.

Licensing material in digital form can also raise privacy concerns. A recent trend in university licensing of digital material is for members of the university community to access that material directly from a central site maintained by the publisher, rather than from a local site mounted by the university. This type of architecture requires that each individual be identified to the publisher as a valid member of the licensed university community. This approach carries the potential for dangerous violations of the privacy that university researchers have come to expect. Libraries carefully guard circulation information, and many purposely destroy all but aggregate statistics to avoid having to respond to law enforcement agencies seeking an individualís reading habits. It is extremely unlikely that publishers will provide this kind of privacy protection. Today a large number of websites monitor the browsing that goes on at their site, tracking who is looking at what, how often, and for how long. A whole industry has emerged that purchases this kind of personal marketing information from site managers and resells it. In difficult financial times, even licensors who are committed to privacy concerns may find the temptation of payment for this kind of information difficult to resist.

Another key concern for libraries is the way in which licensing digital information will affect interlibrary loans (ILL). Due to consolidation in the publication industry, scholarly journal subscription costs have skyrocketed in recent years (Guernsey, Case, McCabe, Wyly). The only way that libraries have been able to respond to this is by developing cooperative purchasing agreements with other nearby libraries. But most licensing agreements for journals in electronic form prohibit ILL or any other form of access outside the immediate user community. Licensing has the potential of not only destroying librariesí recent response to the crisis of the rising cost of serials, but it may also destroy their historic cooperative lending practices. Libraries, which have traditionally cooperated to guarantee that users of even the poorest library could employ ILL to borrow materials that their library could not afford to purchase, are likely to find themselves prohibited by licensing agreements from engaging in ILL.
 

The increasing use of licensing schemes to avoid domains (like fair use) where the public good must be taken into consideration is part of a larger recent trend where commercial transactions take precedent over what used to be regarded as public rights or part of the public good.

In recent years, libel laws have been used to try to suppress criticisms that have been traditionally protected by free speech. These lawsuits, filed by corporate entities against individuals who have criticized them, have laid the burden of proof upon the defendants, forcing them to prove that all their criticisms were true. In 1998 Oprah Winfrey won an expensive court battle defending herself against a $12 million lawsuit. The lawsuit, filed by the cattle industry under a recent food disparagement law, challenged statements Oprah made on her television talk show about the health of eating beef. According to the New York Times, "critics say that they [recent food disparagement laws] are a serious infringement on free-speech protections and are driven by business interests intent on silencing journalists and others who question the safety of the American food supply"(Verhovek). In a similar case in Britain, McDonalds sued activists from London Greenpeace who had created a leaflet urging consumers to boycott McDonalds for a host of reasons (ranging from health to working conditions to the effects of cattle raising practices on tropical rainforests). In this long-running "McLibel" case, the defendants were forced to prove each of the accusations they had made in their leaflet (Vidal).

Many groups within our society use the threat of intellectual property infringement litigation to avoid criticism or suppress works that they disapprove of. As many of the cases listed below show, limitations to the fair use defense against copyright infringement can result in the elimination of parody and satire, the curtailment of free speech, or the suppression of creativity, particularly in the form of new artistic styles:

• In 1999 eToys, a toy distributor, sued the artist group eToy accusing them of trademark infringement, trademark dilution and unfair competition for using the internet domain name etoy.com for their satiric website. Even though the artists had used the etoy name before the toy distributor even existed, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge granted a preliminary injunction against the artists, and under threats of $10,000/day fines, the artists stopped using the domain name (Mirapaul 1999). Only after an extensive protest campaign by artists and free speech advocates (as well as some guerilla direct-action tactics) did the toy company drop their lawsuit (Mirapaul 2000).
• In 2000 Mattel sued artist Tom Forsythe claiming that his satiric photographs of Barbie dolls violated their copyright and trademarks over Barbie. Forsythe had sold postcards of his photographs with the dolls posed performing household chores and in sexual positions, obviously commenting on the role of Barbie in perpetuating gender stereotypes. In February 2001 a federal Appeals Court ruled that Forsythe's did not violate Mattel's copyright or trademark. (Mattel 2001)
• In the late 1980s artist Jeff Koons created a wooden sculpture of a couple holding a large number of puppies in their arms. Photographer Art Rogers, who had taken a photograph of a couple holding puppies in their arms and was marketing it as a postcard, sued Koons for copyright infringement. Koons claimed that his work was parody and that most art was derivative in similar ways. The courts ruled against Koons (reaching as high as a June 1992 decision of the US District Court of Appeals), and ordered him to pay a large financial settlement to Rogers.
• In the late 1960s satirical cartoonist Dan OíNeill created a mouse which he used as a minor character in an underground comic book that satirized a detestable corporate America. Walt Disney Productions sued OíNeill and his publisher for copyright infringement. In a series of cases and appeals that nearly ruined OíNeill financially, the courts ruled that publication of a comic including the mouse was a violation of Disneyís copyright (Walt Disney Productions vs The Air Pirates). The rulings in this case raises disturbing issues about copyright infringement being used to inhibit an artist from engaging in satire or parody of a cultural icon.
• In 1998, a French AIDS awareness advertising campaign withdrew two ads under threat of suit by Walt Disney Inc. One ad featured Snow White in suspenders and fishnet stockings and the other featured Cinderella in a seductive pose (Disney Pressure Halts French AIDS Ad Campaign). Disney contended that these ads constituted copyright infringement, and the mere threat of litigation caused the AIDS awareness group to pull their ads. This incident is interesting both because it did not require actual litigation (the mere threat of litigation assured compliance) and because the characters Snow White and Cinderella were not created by Disney, and were folklore characters for hundreds of years before the Disney company was even formed.
• In 1990 the estate of Roy Orbison sued the rap group 2 Live Crew for copyright infringement because they used "sampling" of Orbisonís original song in their parody of "Pretty Woman". Though the Federal District Court supported 2 Live Crewís claim that parody was a fair use, in 1992 the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed the decision, contending that fair use did not come into play because the parody song had commercial character. This was a disturbing decision that would severely limit most rap group "sampling" and any kind of parody that might be sold for a profit. Luckily, in 1994 the Supreme Court overruled the appeals court and held that their parody was fair use (Luther R. Campbell et al. vs Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.).
• In 1991 the band Negativland released a single parodying radio disk jockey Casey Kasem and the group U-2ës song "I Still Havenít Found What Iím Looking For". Almost immediately U2ís distributor (Island Records) and publisher (Warner/Chappell) went to court charging copyright infringement. After only 2 weeks, all recordings were pulled from the shelves, and the recording has never made it back into music stores. The several years of ensuing litigation almost bankrupted Negativland members. But the band, which had a history of cultural satire, continued to adamantly defend the social importance of artistic appropriation such as sampling. "Throughout our various mass media, we now find many artists who work by ëselectingí existing cultural material to collage with, to create with, and to comment upon. ... The psychology of art has always favored fragmentary ëtheftí in a way that does not engender a ëlossí to the owner. Call this ëbeing influencedí if you want to sound legitimate". (Negativland, page 154).
• In Fall 1996 webmasters of fan sites for Star Trek began receiving letters from a Viacom/Paramount attorney charging copyright and trademark infringement. The letters demanded that all such material be removed immediately, including photographs, sound files, excerpts from books, and even "artistic renditions of Star Trek characters or other properties" (Levitt). A few months later it was revealed that Viacom/Paramount was preparing to make their own Star Trek website public, and used the threat of intellectual property litigation to remove any competition or confusion ahead of time (Granick, Ward). This litigation threat had an additional chilling effect on free speech: a request by the Star Trek Usenet Discussion group (rec.arts.sf.starwars) to create a new subgroup dedicated to fan fiction was vetoed (Granick) because Paramountís litigation had claimed that fictional accounts using Star Trek characters or settings were violations of their intellectual property (Ward).
• In a similar move, in December 2000 Warner Brothers began sending letters to hundreds of operators of Harry Potter fan-sites, claiming that their sites violated Warner's intellectual property rights for a variety of reasons (their domain name included the name of a Harry Potter character, or they published images of one of the characters on their website). Among other things, Warner claimed thatthese fan-sites caused confusion among Internet users, even though many of them clearly stated that they had no connections to the publishers or authors and even provided links to Warner's official site. Many of the teenagers operating these sites were bullied into shutting them down and turning over the domain names to Warner (Grunier & Lippman 2000).
• In the 1990s the Church of Scientology won significant monetary damages in a series of lawsuits against a number of former church members who had posted criticisms of the Church to newsgroups or on their websites. The Churchís Religious Technology Center monitors the Internet to find postings that include portions of the churchís writings, then files suits against the posters and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) claiming that posting writings of the church constitutes copyright infringement. Threatened litigation against ISP Netcom led Netcom to adopt a new policy forbidding any posting of copyrighted material anywhere on their site, and allowing them to act quickly to remove any material when copyright challenges arise. The results of such a policy means that any rightsholder can get the ISP to remove material that they donít like, even if the poster of the material believes that posting constitutes fair use (Espe).
• In 1996 the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) told the Girl Scouts of the USA that scout camps must start paying a licensing fee to sing any of the 4 million copyrighted songs that ASCAP controlled (Walker and Fagan). This included girl scout staples such as "Happy Birthday". Many camps went songless for months, until newspaper and talk show attention generated enough outrage that ASCAP was forced to say that they had no intention of prosecuting girl scout camps for violations of singing songs around the campfire. But in backing down, ASCAP still insisted that they still might prosecute camps for playing background music without a license. Though most citizens would bristle at ASCAPís attempts to charge the girl scouts, as a copyright holder the law is on their side, and the girl scoutsí only defense would be fair use (but only as long as fair use remains a defense).

A rich public domain of materials whose copyright has expired creates a freely useable set of information that an individual can draw upon for any purpose whatsoever. Fair use and first sale add material currently under copyright to this public space, as long as they are used for social commentary or educational purposes. Together, the concepts of public domain, fair use and first sale form an Information Commons -- a diverse public space for free speech and creativity.

These three concepts are deeply intertwined with a value system that emphasizes access to information over privatization of information. These concepts promote democratic values such as political critique and satire, equal access to information for education, and the diversity of creativity that comes from letting less powerful societal voices develop new art forms that comment upon older ones.

In recent years we have seen a veritable assault on the public domain, fair use, and first sale ó from bullying threats of litigation, to court cases, to harsh legislation. The content industry is not only trying to reshape copyright from a public good into an unlimited economic right, but they are even trying to expand their rights into new arenas where these can be used to suppress criticism.

The content industry has complained vociferously about potential economic harm, yet their assertions run counter to a variety of examples which raise questions as to whether they will be harmed economically: The Netherlands has a much more liberal policy than fair use, allowing individuals unlimited reproduction of copyrighted material for their own private use; and the content industry still operates profitably within the Netherlands. As the effects from the Betamax court case show, technological changes initially perceived as economically threatening can lead to the discovery of new economic models involving income streams that exceed the ones previously "threatened". And as the software industry has shown, lowering prices not only provides a great deterrence to copyright infringement, but can open up new markets of potential customers.

But the most devastating impact from these recent changes is the likely transformation of information into a consumer product. There has always been a distinct set of differences between information and commodities. (For example, if I sell or give someone a toy, I no longer have it; but if I sell or give them information I still retain it.) The law has recognized this difference by treating intellectual property differently than tangible property. As the law is changing to eliminate the public good aspects of intellectual property, we are seeing a rapid increase in the commodification of information. The area of authorship and creativity will increasingly resemble the world of consumer products ó intellectual property will become more bland and corporate controlled. Most individuals will find it more and more difficult to become a creator, and will settle for being merely a consumer. And diverse voices will be more and more marginalized. As Negativland wrote in the Epilogue to their book, "We are suggesting that our modern surrender of the age-old concept of shared culture to the exclusive interests of private owners has relegated our population to spectator status and transformed our culture into an economic commodity." (Negativland, p 190) We need to stop the fencing off of our information commons and seize it back as a public space.
 

Some portions of this article appeared in Peace Review. Karen Gracy and Snowden Becker provided research assistance, and Sharon Falk provided helpful insights. Conversations with Sam Trosow and Pam Samuelson, as well as participation in the National Research Councilís panel on Intellectual Property helped the author better understand many of the legal concepts.