Register's Statement on Copyright Awareness Week

The Register of Copyrights, the Honorable Marybeth Peters, is enthusiastic about the Office’s participation in Copyright Awareness Week. “The U.S. Copyright Office is proud to be a major part of Copyright Awareness Week this year,” Peters said.

On the history of copyright law, she said, “the Founders of our country believed that by stimulating authors and publishers to create and disseminate works, the public would be benefited. The Founders even deemed it important enough to include copyright among the powers of the limited government they created, vesting Congress with the Constitutional authority to ‘Promote the Progress of Science . . . by securing for limited Times to Authors . . . the exclusive Right to their respective Writings . . . ’ As a result, we have over 200 years of history living with copyright as a part of our culture—200 years of copyright’s success if measured by today’s convenient, inexpensive access to a wealth of creative works. Because this rich history exists for copyright, we should review and understand it before we make judgments about where to go in the future on the issues of copyright and the information age.”

Peters also commented specifically on the importance and timeliness of public education about copyright law. “Recent changes in technology have increased copyright’s exposure to the public at large. Until the early 1990s, copyright was more or less invisible to the general public. But with the advent of digital technologies and the Internet, works of authorship are now accessible on an unprecedented scale. Copyright has thus become increasingly visible, and we are seeing that the public view of copyright is playing a more significant role in how copyright laws and policies are shaped. Therefore public education about copyright is more critical now than ever; the public needs to know about copyright law generally, what it may have to say about the use of certain technologies, and how some uses of these technologies can undermine the copyright system as a whole. Initiatives like Copyright Awareness Week are essential to this purpose. Both the government and interested private parties have roles to play in the crucially important task of educating the public about copyright.”

March 9, 2005