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being considered by Congress can present some precise but flexible guidelines, the resulting legacy of vagueness will preclude the chance for effective and mutually profitable cooperation between the Government and the publishing industry on literally hundreds of publishing projects of crucial importance to science, technology, and education. A few case histories will serve to indicate the dimensions of the problem, and to suggest a possible solution. The history of the 1909 Copyright Act suggests that Congress meant the "no-copyright" policy to apply only to publications of the Government Printing Office. But over the years the GPO gradually evolved into a publishing giant that prints and sells "official documents" on subjects ranging from a perennially popular booklet on how to raise guppies to a recently published 627-page compilation of The Collected Papers of Sir Thomas Havelock on Thermodynamics. (One has to admire the bureaucratic adroitness with which this classical work of a British scientist has been transmuted into an "official" US publication.) Over the same years the no-copyright policy for GPO publications has gradually lost status, and now many such publications appear with notices of private copyright. Among them are two very official Congressional publications that have been printed by the GPO and privately copyrighted by specially privileged people: Cannon's Procedure in the House of Representatives, by the former Speaker Clarence Cannon, and Senate Procedure, Precedents, and Practices, by Charles L. Watkins, Parliamentarian of the US Senate. Both of these "crony" copyrights were authorized by special acts of Congress.

In more recent years two other viewpoints have emerged in this area of copyright problems. Both have strong support among people who are convinced that they are safeguarding the public interest. The first argues that no private copyright should be allowed in any publication on which Federal funds have been spent by contract or grant, either directly or indirectly. The second holds that no government employee should be allowed to copyright any work that he produces in the general area of his official responsibility.

Until 1958 all these positions, both old and new, were occasionally debated but successfully skirted with only a few confrontations between authors, publishers, and Government officials. Then came the angry and noisy Public Affairs Associates Inc., v. Rickover case that brought squarely to court the question of what is or is not a "publication of the United States Government." In hearing this case, which centered on whether certain of Admiral Rickover's public addresses and lectures were entitled to copyright protection, the US Court of Appeals once again referred to the regrettable vagueness of Section 8, remarking ruefully that it "creates a sea of troublesome questions." Admiral Rickover and his antagonist, M. B. Schnapper, proprietor of the Public Affairs Press, have quieted down a bit while their case lags in an indecisive, legalistic limbo. But the sea of troublesome questions has continued to churn about in the debate about the proposed new Copyright Act of 1965. This bill was introduced in Congress last February after more than five years of careful and intelligent preparation by the Register of Copyrights, Abraham L. Kaminstein, and his associates in the US Copyright Office. It represents the first overhaul of our copyright law since 1909, and the hands that drafted it have

been much more specific than were their counterparts in 1909. Still, the new bill leaves open several important questions concerning copyright in publications written by Government employees or financed by Government funds. If the Act is passed without changing the present language of its Section 105, dealing with United States Government works, these questions will have to be settled later by the courts. The process will be costly, slow, and perhaps harsh in many instances. This is certainly an inelegant solution.

The first major question involves works written by Government employees. The new bill defines a "work of the US Government" as one "prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government within the scope of his official duties or employment." While this language is quite specific, it is somewhat broader than that of an earlier draft of the bill, in which the concluding words were: "as part of his official duties" (italics mine). Many of us publishers believe that the earlier version leaves less room for uncertainty and contention. For example, under the proposed definition, would J. Edgar Hoover, in writing his best-selling books on Communism, be producing "works of the US Government"? One can argue that combating Communism in the US is within the scope of Mr. Hoover's duties as director of the FBI, and that alerting the public to the existence and methods of communist infiltration is within the scope of his job. If that is so, would the private copyrights in Mr. Hoover's books be valid?

Similarly, it could be debated whether a professor at the US Naval Academy had produced a "work of the US Government" when he wrote and copyrighted a highly successful text in mathematics. The author has successfully maintained that his official assignment was to teach students; that this responsibility did not extend to his writing of the textbook; that in fact he wrote the text merely to provide himself with a tool for better teaching. Yet it could be argued that the preparation of the text came "within the scope" of his employment at Annapolis.

One of the most noted and debated of private copyrights in Government-sponsored publications is held by Professor Henry D. Smyth for his book, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes. Described in its subtitle as "The Official Report on the Development of the Atomic Bomb under the Auspices of the US Government," this historic report was written for the Atomic Energy Commission and published in 1946 by the Princeton University Press. AEC officials, recognizing the book's potential impact and public appeal, authorized Professor Smyth to publish a commercial edition simultaneously with an official GPO printing. Both carried a private copyright notice.

The GPO edition in paper covers was priced at 40 cents; the commercial edition was published in cloth binding at $2, and later in paper covers at $1. In spite of the higher prices, the Princeton University Press editions outsold the other by a wide margin: 125,000 copies as against 40,000. The GPO edition, last reprinted in 1950, is now out of print, but the Princeton cloth-bound edition is still in print and in steady demand at $4 per copy.

The success of the commercial editions of the Smyth Report apparently convinced AEC officials that there might be more to publishing a book than just printing it. The AEC now contracts for commercial

publication of many of its important technical works. Three multivolume series and over 100 individual books and technical reports have since been published successfully in this way.

The second major question involves works that have been produced (that is, written or compiled) with Government financial assistance. In the past 40 years, literally hundreds of such works on which Federal funds have been spent in one way or another have been published and copyrighted privately by contractors or grantees. These range from the two great Hoover Commission reports of the 1930s, Recent Economic Changes and Recent Social Trends, to the monumental Education Media Index, an $80 directory which was compiled and published last year by a private firm under contract with the Educational Media Council, which was operating with US Office of Education funds.

Outstanding among the many examples of cooperation between Government and the publishing industry that occurred in the postwar years is the MIT Radiation Laboratory Series. This landmark series, probably the most important technical work on a single subject ever produced in the US, was proposed late in 1944 by Dr. I. I. Rabi, then associate director of the Radiation Laboratory at MIT. He thought it was imperative that the millions of Federal dollars and the priceless man-hours of the country's finest scientific minds that were spent on the wartime work on radar at the Laboratory should lead to more than a series of routine reports printed by the GPO. He envisioned an important, carefully prepared, systematic work-something rather like the great German Handbuch der Physik.

Dr. Vannevar Bush, wartime director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, carried the idea to the Congressional Joint Committee on Printing, which agreed that publication of the proposed series would be better accomplished by a commercial firm. Dr. Bush then obtained an OSRD appropriation of $500,000 to finance the estimated cost of preparing manuscripts and illustrations for a 27-volume series.

The leading technical publishers of the country were invited to submit competitive bids, and a publishing contract was signed just seven months after the Japanese surrender. The publisher sent to MIT a resident editor who helped to establish editorial style and standards, and later guided the routines of manuscript production, copy editing, and proofreading. For this editorial help, and for its substantial investment in production, promotion, and sales costs, the firm was granted an exclusive copyright on each volume for ten years, which was estimated as the span of prime scientific value of the work. In turn, the publisher agreed to pay into the US Treasury the usual author's royalty and to provide a required number of free copies for official use by the OSRD.

The 27 manuscripts were scheduled for completion in six months, with publication to follow six months later. This schedule proved to be far too ambitious; actually it took four years to complete publication. The $500,000 appropriation ran out at the end of six months, and the publisher had to assume all remaining editorial costs. It proved to be a complex and difficult project, but in the end the series. was a brilliant contribution to the literature of science and technology.

The story also had a happy financial ending for everyone concerned-including the US taxpayer. The publisher invested about $700,000 in editorial and production costs, which took the place of a large investment by the Government. In addition, by the end of ten years the publisher had paid the Government royalties of $270,000; while the estimated Federal income tax on the profits from the series came to about $125,000. Thus was generated a total of almost $400,000 of direct revenue to the Government.

To most observers the publication of the Radiation Laboratory Series was a model of beneficial collaboration between the Government and private enterprise. But, again, there were those who strongly felt that it was really a legally questionable grab of public property by private interests.

Often, such critics naïvely fail to distinguish between publishing and printing. The chief contribution of a commercial publishing house is the know-how of its staff-the editors, art directors, production managers, promotion managers, and salesmen. These people are experts who shape ideas and raw manuscript into sophisticated books, who advertise and sell them vigorously throughout the world. The publisher is a professional who invests his experience and facilities to produce a book, and risks his capital to print and sell it. He usually makes a substantial contribution to the quality of the final product. Further, he not only puts the published book in all available trade channels but also sees that it is properly placed for notice and review in the literature of its subject. These are the reasons why commercial publication enhances the basic purpose of publishing-the widest possible dissemination of a new work among all interested readers in the world. And these are, of course, the reasons why so many authors of Government-financed scientific and technical works prefer commercial publication over GPO printing.

In passing, it seems proper to note another naïve failure of the advocates of public-domain status for all Government-financed works. This is their failure to realize that, in most cases, what everyone can publish, no one actually will publish. This is especially so of a scientific or technical work of specialized interest. For such a work its limited market will support only one edition. Two editions by different publishers would be profitless for both, and three or four editions would be ruinous for everyone. Once in a blue moon a Warren Commission Report will come along and four or five commercial firms will reprint it, each adding its own distinctive (and copyrightable) notes and interpretations. But for every such report, there are produced for Federal agencies 200 to 300 works of which only one edition can be published profitably. It is truly a pity that so many people choose to disregard this fact of publishing economics.

But we publishers have demonstrated that we, too, can overlook important matters. For only recently has the book industry as a whole become concerned over the question of copyright in Government-sponsored works. Now suddenly this concern has mounted to a feeling near alarm. In the last five years, the Federal expenditure on scientific and technical information grew from about $70 million to $223 million. Some publishers fear the Government may eventually preempt large and important areas of scientific and technical information,

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and thereby severely damage the private-sector technical information industry.

One serious concern involves the large, mechanized information systems, which the Government will surely spend millions of dollars to develop in the next decade. It now seems probable that Federallyfinanced information centers will widely replace conventional information media, including several kinds of technical and reference books. One does not have to be especially bright to foresee how this can devastate important areas of commercial publishing. This threat is not remote to many of us it seems to be just around the corner.

A good example of this particular complex of Government-related problems is the newly projected computer-based Chemical Information System that is being developed by the Chemical Abstracts Service under Government grants to the American Chemical Society. ACS officials estimate that it will cost more than $40 million to make the proposed system fully operative. The research and development phases, costing about $15 million, will be financed by three Federal agencies. After that, the start-up operational costs of $25 million will presumably be financed by the sale of services and publications produced by

the system.

This completely mechanized system will produce computer files of the names and structures of compounds, their physical properties, biochemical properties, and so on. If successfully developed, it is sure to give the Chemical Abstracts Service a virtual monopoly of basic chemical information, including print-outs of handbooks of scientific data and technical practice. These will be constantly updated volumes which will replace similar works in chemistry and chemical engineering that are now produced by commercial publishers. In effect, this Government activity may put an entire discipline of scientific information into the hands of a nonprofit publishing monopoly.

But the prospects for the new chemical information system may not be so bright, even to a nonprofit organization, if copyright of the products of the system is prohibited by the new law. If its printed products can be copied by anyone and everyone, and if its computer tapes can be freely used in any manner, then the Chemical Abstracts Service will not be able to obtain sufficient revenue to support operational costs. In short, the system's economic viability will be destroyed. In which case if the system is to survive the US taxpayers will have to support indefinitely a project that certainly could and should be self-supporting beyond the initial research and development stage. And what can happen here can happen in many other discipline areas where only Federal "seed money" should be required to establish comparable information systems.

So much for the copyright problems facing technical publishers. The vagaries of copyrights in Government-sponsored works also pose bewildering difficulties for textbook houses. Faced with the problems that emerged from Federally-financed curriculum reform programs in school science, textbook publishers were so stunned that they blinked and ran one way, then blinked again and ran the other, reversing their field and ending up taking a stand that seemed exactly opposite from that of the technical publishers. All this was so confusing as to justify a rueful remark that publishers appeared to be making a two-faced

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