Copyright notice Constitution Society 7301 RR 620 N #155,276 Austin, TX 78726 512/531-0767 http://www.constitution.org mailto:jon.roland@constitution.org 2001/07/02 Neil J. Rosini Franklin, Weinrib, Rudell & Vassallo 488 Madison Ave New York, NY 10022-5761 Dear Mr. Rosini: This is in reply to your letter of June 27, 2001, concerning the online publication of 1984 by George Orwell. We thank you for bringing to our attention that the copyright on the book has been renewed. The unsanctioned publication of the work has a long history. During the 1950s it was widely circulated in repressive countries like the Soviet Union and countries under its domination, and Red China, as samizdat, by being hand-typed, using carbon paper used to make copies, or occasionally using a mimeograph machine. With the advent of copiers and fax machines, copies were made and passed around more freely. In the 1960s digital text files first appeared and were copied and passed around. When computer bulletin boards appeared in the 1980s, copies of the work got even wider distribution, and with the advent of the Internet and World Wide Web, copies appeared there. By 1998 one could find it online on many sites around the world, especially sites in Russia, but I never found any objections to such publication on any of the forums devoted to this purpose. Several of the Russian sites stated that it had been put on the Internet by "Dag Orwell", which one could presume was one of the heirs of the Eric Blair (George Orwell) estate, who had taken the pen name Orwell, and that he had authority to do so. We would appreciate it if you would provide copies of the chain of evidence in support of your client's copyright claim, including such things as letters testamentary for the heirs, establishing who is agent for the Estate, the copyright renewal, evidence that there is no hiatus in the copyright, and the contract with RosettaBook, LLC, so we can tell people about them if anyone asks. You should also show what efforts you or others have made over the last several decades to defend your client's interests, to answer the argument that the author's estate or publisher abandoned electronic publication rights. We are also curious about who this "Dag Orwell", cited as the source of the online editions, might be. You will also need to defend the position that in the case of this work, "fair use" can include all of it. Usually, it does not, but a work like this that has played a significant role in bringing down the Soviet Union and ending the Cold War is arguably the subject of fair use in its entirety. There are also unconfirmed rumors that the entire work has been read into legislative records or entered as pleadings in court proceedings. You should also provide evidence that this longtime, widespread online publication has caused reduced net sales of the printed edition of the book, and not actually caused sales of the printed edition, and the profits derived therefrom, to increase. The latter is more likely. Many people enjoy reading online editions, then purchase printed editions, who would not otherwise have done so. On your enumerated demands: First, if you visit our web site you will find that the links to online editions of 1984 (and Animal Farm) are not to local copies on our site. They are to search engines, which show hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of copies of the work on sites in dozens of countries, some of which do not participate in copyright conventions, each copy bit different, indicating independent derivation. You should provide a list of countries in which your client's claim is valid. Second, we do not have records of these files, other than temporary browser cache files created from viewing the pages on the sites, mostly in other countries, which have been automatically deleted after 24 hours. The chose of language in your demand is mostly not applicable to digital publication, in which the only objects are files. Third, as you very well know, we do not sell any of the works on our site or linked from pages on it. Everything is offered free, as a public service, for non-profit educational purposes. Fourth, this organization does not hold marketable assets, or use what is conventionally considered currency, since it takes the position that only gold or silver is constitutional legal tender on the territory of States of the United States. To prove any case, you will have to show that the defendant knew the file was on his site or put it there, and there is no way to prove this. It is an easy matter for anyone, with a little effort, to put a file on anyone's web site without his knowledge or consent. It is being done on government web sites all the time. I have found files of unknown origin on sites, including our own. One just has to clean them out when they are discovered. I do not envy your efforts to halt online publication at this late date on the many web sites in many countries. In the Age of the Internet, when anyone with a computer and scanner can render a book into a digital file in a matter of a few hours, and release it into the world where, if it is popular, it will soon be copied perfectly by thousands or millions of persons at essentially no cost, the viability of intellectual property is dubious, except in a few cases where there may be a large profit involved. We are entering an age in which information creators will have to be supported by donations from patrons, or support themselves with other work. The law might attempt to resist this reality, but eventually it must yield. A better solution for your client would be for it to put the complete work on its own web site, with a link to purchase a printed version. It would acquire the reputation as the canonical version, which would attract more visitors, and some of those visitors are going to want a print copy they can carry around with them. Digital editions make a good marketing tool for print editions. Jon Roland, President