Introduction

Books would not exist if authors and publishers couldnÕt produce a livelihood from their work. Copyright is the mechanism that helps to provide such a livelihood. It encourages diversity by providing an incentive for authors and publishers to invest time, effort and capital in the creation and production of books. This is an independent economic incentive, removed from patronage or grants, which doesnÕt make a judgement on the value of the book.

The economic benefits from owning copyright in a book can be varied: royalties from sales, spin offs such television or film adaptations, merchandising, and reproduction fees.

Since the Second World War, the use of books and other copyright material has changed and will continue to change, particularly with the increasing availability and sophistication of reproduction technology. Technology has been the driving force behind this change, which has affected not only the production and distribution of books, but also the way they are purchased and consumed.

The printing press allowed literary works to become easily available, consistent, and relatively inexpensive. For centuries material had to be copied by hand, reprinted or republished. There were considerable physical limitations and cost barriers on how much could be copied or reproduced.

The development of effective copying, as opposed to printing, techniques began with the invention of the xeroxography process, that is xerox copying, in America in 1938. In Australia, copying by hand and gestetner was the common practice after the war, until the release of the first photocopier in 1959 brought a better way to copy books, and with it a new attitude towards books and printed matter.

People no longer saw access to books through copying as a privilege but as a right. The expectation became that they could get complete and accurate copies of books instantly and at minimal cost. Many people who read or use copyright material in the course of their work, for study or for leisure, don't actually buy the original material: they borrow it from libraries, buy copies from a document delivery service, or photocopy it.

And as we move further into the digital age, we now have the option of downloading information from a CD ROM or the internet or having it emailed to us. There is an increasing expectation that we can have access instantly and cheaply, if not for free.

The new technologies are able to deliver perfect copies, in unlimited numbers, which can be sent electronically to multiple recipients at the touch of a button. Digital copies can also be manipulated and edited, apparently without leaving any trace of interference.

What does this mean for the book and printed material in general? The book was predicted to die with the advent of photocopying. However, as technology allows increased production and reproduction, it has served to increase the availability of and demand for material, and so widen its distribution.

The good news is that technology will also give us a way of keeping track of copyright material in the digital environment. It is already helping us keep track of books through barcoding and electronic tagging, and increasingly helping us keep track of copying. We just need to remember that the existing and developing technologies are radically changing not just the production of books but also the way they are consumed. Everything is up for grabs.

What makes a book?

We're here to talk about the history of the book in Australia, and I'm here to talk about the contribution of copyright to that history, and hopefully to the future, through encouraging investment in the development and dissemination of information.

But what makes a book? Is the essence of a book the physical way it's printed - it's design and layout? Is it the words? or the nature and purpose of its content? or a combination of the two?

With digital technology, a book may only ever be published electronically. Indeed, it was announced this week that the management committee of the Booker Prize has for the first time accepted a virtual novel as an entry. Can it still be a book if it's never actually published on paper?

In the end, a book has to be more than just a collection of bound pages. Otherwise, we could define a great moment in the history of post-war Australian publishing as being when the Sydney phone book was split into two volumes.

The value of any book is its content, and the only way to protect that content and to encourage the development of more content is by using intellectual property laws such as copyright.

What is this thing called copyright?

It is not ideas but their expression which are subject to copyright.

A modern day management consultant would probably say that Thomas Edison was in the business of producing patents. By patenting an invention, a period of grace is allowed to further refine and develop that product, and to get the economic return on the investment made in developing that product in the first place.

Copyright is the same but instead of protecting the invention of the electric light bulb, it's protecting the development of all sorts of creative works, including literary and dramatic, artistic, musical, academic, cinematic and journalistic.

However copyright should not be used as a barrier to accessing information. Copyright instead has to act as the framework which allows us to access information whilst protecting the investment of the copyright owners and providing them with an economic return.

Copyright is intended to protect creative works from being used without the agreement of the owner, and encourages fair payment for their use. In Australia, copyright in all forms of works is governed by the Copyright Act 1968 (the Act), which is a federal act.

Prior to the Copyright Act 1968, copyright in Australia was managed under common law. The first Copyright Act was passed in England by Queen Anne in 1709, and was specifically aimed at 'preventing the ruin of [creators] and their families' and at encouraging 'learned men to compose and write books'. The intent remains unchanged.

Australian copyright legislation provides quite clear distinctions between the types of rights held by copyright owners. These rights vary depending on the nature of the work, for example whether it is a sound recording or a film or television broadcast.

For literary, dramatic and musical works, there are a number of specific rights under the Act. These are the right to reproduce, publish, perform in public, broadcast, transmit to subscribers and adapt (which includes translation and dramatisation). For Published Editions of books, it is the right to reproduce. Copyright owners are free to deal with their rights in any way they choose.

Copyright Agency Limited (or CAL) is what is called a copyright collecting society and we act as agents for authors, journalists and publishers (all of whom are our members) in managing their reproduction rights. We licence users such as educational institutions, governments, corporations to copy works, collect the licence fees and distribute those moneys to those people whose works we find have been copied.

What has copyright done in the print era?

In a traditional printing environment, publishers provide the access to copyright material. Under agreement with the author or creator of the work, they print the work, physically store it in warehouses, and can produce fresh stocks through their printing presses.

When copyright legislation was first enacted in Australia thirty years ago, it was in the context of allowing the copying of works (mainly by hand) for private and individual study. At that time the copying technology was such that copying posed no threat to the economic viability of creating and publishing, since copying was still relatively laborious and it was easier to re-print bulk copies.

As photocopying technology has improved, photocopy machines have become defacto printing presses which are cheaper, quicker, and cleaner: anyone can operate them and in many cases you can get almost as good quality reproduction as an offset printing press.

And almost without our noticing, the age of the photocopier has segued into the digital age. We can now save a file on our computer, email it directly to a print queue at our favourite printing company, it goes onto the printer as a digital image, and we are presented with a high quality print job without any human interference after the design phase.

In the digital age, the lines between publishing, republishing and copying are blurring, for example document delivery services or news clippings compiled by media monitoring organisations: the copies are the point of the exercise, not an incidental activity.

The lines between the types of works are also blurring. What is a literary work in the digital environment, where a book can be published online, complete with photographs, graphics, animations, soundbites, and video clips? Clearly, a multimedia work such as this is more than the sum of its parts yet the copyright rules are currently different for each part of the work, and nothing really covers the whole.

Some background to CAL.

For those of you not familiar with CAL's operations, I'll very quickly give you some background. We operate on a not-for-profit basis, and act as an agent for authors, journalists and publishers in managing their reproduction rights.

CAL has been actively operating since 1984, and it is somewhat salutary that it is only the advent of computers which has allowed us to keep track of the immense amount of data needed to manage this process.

Under the Copyright Act there are two statutory copying licences: for educational institutions and institutions assisting the disabled, and for government. These statutory licences allow educational institutions and government to copy within certain defined limits, under certain conditions, and for certain purposes, without the need to seek permission from the copyright owner. It is an automatic approval to copy.

CAL also manages a number of voluntary copying licence schemes, for example with associations, pre-schools and corporations. These organisations voluntarily take out a copying licence in order to ensure that they are complying with the legislation.

The existence of the statutory licences acknowledges that there are groups of people, such as schools, universities, TAFEs, that need to have access to information. At the same time it acknowledges that the creators or owners of the material need to be recompensed for the impact that copying has on their ability to sell their books.

CAL's business is to manage this balance, by helping our licensees who are copying to manage their copyright obligations and by supporting access to information, as well as trying to gain fair payment for the copyright owners.

The digital age clearly represents many challenges for CAL, its licensees and its members as copying technology changes, and as the way materials are read and used changes. It is taking up a lot of time in copyright organisations around the world, as we all try to manage issues which are shifting before our eyes, and for which most countries' copyright legislation is simply inadequate.

CAL is actively participating in international copyright industry fora, such as the World Intellectual Property Organisation and the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations.

In addition there are a number of European, US and Australian projects such as those which are developing what are known as electronic copyright management systems, which will watermark or fingerprint a work, so that the copyright owner can track who is using a work and how that work is being used. The developers of digital printing and copying technology such as IBM and Fuji Xerox are also working on ways to integrate copyright management into their print management technology.

If we don't develop this copyright management software and technology, we are faced with the prospect that books and other works may only be made available digitally once the user has paid an exorbitant fee calculated on the basis that there will be multiple unpaid copying after the initial purchase. This will benefit no-one, least of all the users or readers.

And what about the readers in all this?

We're here to talk about the history of the book, but in many respects, the history of the book is also the history of reading, or the history of the use of the book. But where do the readers fit into the equation? We are finding that one of the major effects of digital technology has been on the way books are consumed.

The study of literature and of the printed word has tended to focus on the text, on book production, on book distribution, and the textual contexts of books, their social and political themes and values.

Only recently have we become more aware of the reader as a participant; as someone who not only interprets or translates, but who can now copy, edit, and manipulate the text.

Readers have never been passive receptacles. They have always been interactive and creative. Readers reinvent and reinterpret what they read, incorporating it into and measuring it against their own experience and understanding of the world. This has always been the case. To quote from the play Shadowlands, about author CS Lewis, 'we read to know that we are not alone'.

The early oral tradition meant that poems were learnt by heart and recited in public, giving the text an individual expression and interpretation. Stories recited in ancient times changed each time the storyteller told them. There was no authorised version or single interpretation. Indeed, Socrates warned that writing would deaden the mind.

Copying technology, and especially digital technology, has brought about a reader revolution. The internet was designed so that the power rests with the user, whether that is a self-publisher or someone reading on-line. Readers can now be more than active, they can be involved in a conversation with the writer or even contribute to the story.

Some may consider this to be a frightening development: it may mean a loss of control over the text and increasing demand from readers to be heard. What will this do to the book, to control over the story, to the development of challenging material which may seek to tell us what we don't want to hear? And what will this do to our notions of who 'owns' the story?

Digital technology gives a new avenue for every reader's desire for owning or internalising a work. It opens the door to a more 'physical involvement'. Even before photocopies, readers started to take liberties. They scribbled notes in margins, highlighted sections, crossed out bits they didn't like.

This capacity for interaction certainly comes into its own with digital technology. We can now simply cut and paste or type over selected sections on a computer screen. We manipulate the text or we take what we want and leave the rest.

Digital technology has the potential to undermine the authority of the official version of the text. Now there is no one official version and, in some fields, this can make a crucial difference. A brain surgeon reading a text on how to remove a tumour needs to be able to rely on the authority of that text.

Here, manipulation of the text by third parties can have a very real and terrible impact, so we need a new kind of framework for official versions.

At times, the issues are esoteric - the economics of the book industry rest on copyright law: how to protect the copyrights of authors and publishers when the 'copy' does not exist in this world, but in a virtual one? How to assert the rights of copyright owners in a world that, as one John Barlow said, is both 'everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live?'

Interactive it may be, creative it may possibly be, but unfortunately it can also be an infringement of the copyright of the original creator or owner. Sometimes the owner doesn't mind; but often they do. This is one of the issues that concerns CAL, and the thousands of authors and publishers whose print copyright interests we represent.

This is the nub of it (conclusion)

Copyright, which protects the ownership and authenticity of the printed word, has entered a realm where the text is uncontrollable. And people expect to consume it for free. This is the essential problem that CAL is faced with. How do we track ownership and monitor the integrity of works in a medium that has no respect for such values? Wouldn't it be easier to just give up altogether and abandon all notions of copyright?

I come back to my earlier comment about Thomas Edison being in the business of producing patents. Copyright is a patent on a creative work. It provides an economic protection for the creator and developer, which allows them to invest time, effort and money into the production of works of the mind. It helps them make a living.

In 1998, CAL declared a distribution pool of payments to authors and publishers for copying of their works of just over $18 million. That's $18 m which would not otherwise be channelled to authors and publishers if an organisation such as CAL did not manage the collection process.

In 1994 a report was commissioned, called the Guldberg Report, on the economic value of copyright industries in Australia. This report showed that in 1992/93, the net contribution of copyright-based industries to the total Australian economy was $11 billion, or 2.9% of the total GDP. The largest copyright-based group of industries was literature and print, and the fastest growth was in computer software and computer services. Given the subsequent growth in information technology industries, it is a pretty safe assumption to say that the net contribution of copyright-based industries in 1998/99 is much greater than at the time of the Guldberg Report.

So copyright is definitely worth fighting for.

Digital technology is already making inroads into our perception about what we can and can't do with books, journals, magazines and newspapers. It's obvious that we can't stop it: the challenge is to manage it.

Many of the solutions to the issues which digital copying is raising for authors and publishers will actually reside in that same technology. The electronic copyright management systems which are being developed which will watermark a work and the integration of copyright management systems with print management technology mean that the digital environment will make it easier to keep track of how material is used.

Digital technology can make publication easier and cheaper, distribution more widespread, and reproduction simple. This alone will encourage the development of more material and its wider dissemination. But it is only the protection of the economic value of those works, such as through copyright, that will encourage and reward creation in the long run.

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Last Updated : 12 January 1999