The Nature of Copyright A Law of Users&39 Rights [Paperback]

L. Ray Patterson (Author)
L. RAY PATTERSON (1929–2003) was a widely consulted and cited authority on copyright law and history. He was the Pope F. Brock Professor of Professional Responsibility at the University of Georgia School of Law, and a former Dean of the Emory University Law School. The American Library Association's L. Ray Patterson Copyright Award was established in his honor, and first given out in 2005.

Stanley W. Lindberg (Author)
STANLEY W. LINDBERG (1939–2000) served as editor of the Georgia Review from 1977 until his death. He is credited with transforming the magazine from a regional quarterly into the publication that now regularly attracts work by some of the literary world's most renowned figures and most promising newcomers. Among his many honors, Lindberg received the first Governor's Award in the Humanities in 1986.

This forthright and provocative book offers a new perspective on copyright law and the legal rights of individuals to use copyrighted materials. Most Americans believe that the primary purpose of copyright is to protect authors against the theft of their property. They are wrong, say L. Ray Patterson and Stanley W. Lindberg. Guaranteeing certain rights to authors (and to the entrepreneurs who publish and market their creations) is only an incidental function of copyright; it exists ultimately for the public’s benefit. The constitutionally ordained purpose of copyright, the authors remind us, is to promote the public welfare by the advancement of knowledge. In The Nature of Copyright they present an extended analysis of the fair-use doctrine and articulate a new concept that they demonstrate is implicit in copyright law: the rule of personal use.

Viewing copyright in a historical context, Patterson and Lindberg show how its original purposes&lóÊ