#copyrightreform

Next week, in San Francisco, the Authors Alliance will be launched. The brainchild of one of copyright's greatest scholars (and important original activist) Pam Samuelson, the Alliance will function as an alternative to the Authors Guild. 

As a member (until now) of the Guild, I am happy to see the launch of the Alliance. The Guild, in my view, too often seems too much focused on the narrow interests of commercially successful authors. Those interests are of course important. But not every author is a Scott Turow or JK Rowling, and the rules that might benefit them are not necessarily the rules that benefit the wide range of creators.

This Publishers Weekly story points to one clear example of how the Alliance would have acted differently from the Guild — they would not, Samuelson says, have sued to block snippet access to research library books. That (as the courts eventually concluded) was the right position, and will increase access to authors' creativity, even long after the work is no longer in print. Wildly successful commercial authors might have gained more if access were blocked. But the vast majority of authors would not. A library is not a bookstore — which is good not just for the public but also for (many many) authors.