Copyright Law Lagging Tech Breakthroughs

Copyright law is “completely out of whack” with current technology, and the present level of copyright protection under U.S. law is “excessive.” according to Louis Menand, a Nobel prize winning historian and staff writer for The New Yorker. “By the time most works fall into the public domain, they have lost virtually all their use value,” he argues. Though less of an issue when archival information was of interest to only a select few, now that the Internet makes content widely available to the masses, hiding material away for fear of copyright violations hinders the public good. For example, Menand cites a current lawsuit pitting a photographer against Rod Stewart for using a promotional picture she claims is “substantially similar” to a photo she took of the singer in 1981. The photo that Bonnie Schiffman took, of the back of Stewart’s head, was used as the album cover for “Storyteller.” When the similar photo was used to promote Stewart’s Las Vegas act and world tour, Schiffman sued for $2.5 million. Menand notes that Schiffman’s photograph, already 33 years old, “may be illegal until some time in the twenty-second century.”