Our markets, our democracy, our science, our traditions of free speech, and our art all depend more heavily on a Public Domain of freely available material than they do on the informational material that is covered by property rights. The Public Domain is not some gummy residue left behind when all the good stuff has been covered by property law. The Public Domain is the place we quarry the building blocks of our culture. It is, in fact, the majority of our culture.
Two hundred thirty years ago, the Founding Fathers had a lot on their plates. The task of molding a new nation was a monumental, tangled undertaking, encompassing everything from settling on a national currency and organizing the military to deciding how best to combat pirates.
In the midst of this legislative turmoil, however, they took the time to establish safeguards for the creative output they assumed America’s citizens would produce in years to come.
When the U.S. Constitution was drafted in 1787, the first article included a provision for copyright. Following hot on the heels of language empowering Congress with the right to establish post offices and punish counterfeiters, the framers defined copyright protection as a way to “promote the progress of science and useful arts.”
“The way we do that is by balancing granting exclusive rights to creators with placing limits on those rights to encourage the exchange of ideas,” says Gretchen McCord, a Texas-based librarian and lawyer specializing in copyright issues in libraries.