From the Archives 4: Judge Stephen Breyer on Copyright (1984)

On Sunday, February 5, 1984, Judge Stephen G. Breyer of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit addressed the Congressional Copyright and Technology Symposium, making five points about copyright law and policy. A transcript of his address is available here. Among other things, Breyer reflected on his influential article, "The Uneasy Case for Copyright: A Study of Copyright in Books, Photocopies, and Computer Programs" (1970), which he wrote as a law professor, as the Copyright Office was considering what became the Copyright Act of 1976. Breyer discussed the economic and moral justifications for copyright, the application of the economic justification, why it should apply differently in different contexts, how new technology requires rethinking of the scope of copyright protection, and why we should be wary of extending too much protection. In 1994, Breyer was appointed to the United States Supreme Court, where he has been the key dissenter in many copyright cases.

Also of interest in relation to this speech might be:

I found Breyer's address especially interesting because of his brief and oblique reference to the story of St. Columcille and the "Battle of the Book," in which he references High King Diarmed's ruling, "To every cow its calf; to every book it's copy," as the origin of the moral theory of copyright. This observation reappears in Breyer's dissent in Golan v. Holder, 132 S. Ct. 873, 902 (2012). Breyer understandably relies on Augustine Birrell's 1889 account of the Columcille legend. A. Birrell, Seven Lectures on the Law and History of Copyright in Books 42 (1899). But in a forthcoming article, I will argue that the treatment of the "Battle of the Book" as the "first copyright litigation" reflects only a misunderstanding of what was intended as an allegorical claim to political legitimacy by a 16th century Irish king.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.