College and Research Libraries


80 I College & Research Libraries • January 1979 

sorship, paperbound books, . and textbook 
censorship. Added in this section in the 
fourth edition are "Government Papers, the 
CIA, Official Materials," and "Censorship in 
'A Good Cause.' " 

Appendix 2 covers statements on freedom 
of the press from John Milton's 
Areopagitica, from Thomas Jefferson's writ-
ings, from John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, 
from amendments to the Constitution of the 
United States, from the Library Bill of 
Rights, from Eisenhower's letter on intellec-
tual freedom, and from the Freedom to 
Read Statement. 

Appendix 3 contains "Excerpts from Im-
portant Court Decisions." Appendix 4 is an 
added feature and includes excerpts from 
the 1970 U.S. government document, "The 
Report of the Commission on Obscenity and 
Pornography." Appendix 5 is a selection of 
federal statutes and customs and postal reg-
ulations relating to matters of censorship. 
The "Selected Readings and References" at 
the end of the volume will serve as guides 
to further reading and study for persons 
who wish to do additional study in the field 
of intellectual freedom and censorship. 

The informative, witty, and challenging 
essay written by Attorney Charles Rembar, 
which appears after the preface in this edi-
tion of Banned Books, gives an entertaining 
picture of censorship and law in America. 
This lawyer who successfully defended 
Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, Cle-
land's Fanny Hill, and Miller's Tropic of 
Cancer describes (among other topics) 
landmark obscenity cases and discusses the 
safeguards of the first amendment. 

Banned Books is a valuable source of in-
formation for educators, librarians, students, 
writers, publishers, and for all people who 
are interested in preserving our First 
Amendment freedoms. -Martha Boaz, Uni-
versity of Southern California, Los Angeles. 

The Copyright Dilemma. Proceedings of a 
Conference Held at Indiana University, 
April 14-15, 1977. Edited by Herbert S. 
White. Chicago: American Library Assn., 
1978. 199p. $8.50. LC 78-5929. ISBN 
0-8389-0262-6. 
This conference had as its focus problems 

of implementation and provisions of the new 
copyright law. As editor White points out in 

the preface, it was hoped that the confer-
ence would provide the environment for 
" ... the development of a solution through 
intensive debate[,] and compromise could 
iildeed result in a rational outcome . . .. 
The proceedings that follow indicate quite 
clearly that this assumption was -highly pre-
mature." For those who have participated in 
or followed the copyright saga and have 
been aware of the tensions between librar-
ians and copyright proprietors in recent 
years, that statement comes as no surprise. 

The conference planners put together a 
panel of distinguished representatives for 
the various viewpoints, providing a balanced 
program of representatives from govern-
ment, publishers, authors, information ser-
vices, as well as various types of library 
interests. The conference began with a his-
torical overview of copyright legislation, 
presented by Professor Maurice Holland of 
the Indiana University ·school of Law. 

1 

Government representatives included 
Thomas Brennan, chief counsel of the Sen-
ate Subcommittee on Patents, Trademarks, 
and Copyright; Jon Baumgarten, general 
counsel of the Copyright Office at the Li-
brary of Congress; and Robert Frase, assis-
tant executive director of the Commission 
on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted 
Works (CONTU). Also participating was 
Lee Burchinal, director of the National Sci-
ence Foundation's Division of Science 
Information. 

Representatives of the copyright proprie-
tor community included Irwin Karp, coun-
sel for the Authors League of America; Bella 
Linden, senior partner in the law firm of 
Linden and Deutsch, which has as its 
clients a number of major American pub-
lishers; William Koch, director of publica-
tions for the American Institute of Physics; 
and Paul Zurkowski, president of the Infor-
mation Industry Association. 

Representing the library community were 
Robert Wedgeworth, .executive director of 
the American Library Association; Richard 
de Gennaro, former president of the Associ-
ation of Research Libraries and director of 
the University of Pennsylvania Library; 
Efren Gonzalez, past president and member 
of the copyright committee of the Special 
Libraries Association; and Alphonse Trezza, 
executive director of the National Commis-



.. 

sion on Libraries and Information Science 
(NCLIS). In addition, a stimulating and 
provocative after-dinner talk on the subject 
"Intellectual Property and Intellectual 
Freedom" was given by Robert O'Neill, 
vice-president of Indiana University and 
senior official of the Bloomington campus. 

The format consisted of formal presenta-
tions by each speaker, discussion and inter-
change among presenters, and interaction 
with members of the audience. The volume 
faithfully records all, which makes for in-
teresting reading, if not always explicit clar-
ification by presenters of questions raised by 
conference attendees. Without doubt, the 
proceedings make a worthwhile contribution 
to an understanding of the ~arious and 
diverse conflicting viewpoints and, equally 
important, point 'to the continuing difficul-
ties in resolving them. 

Having attended the conference, I was 
pleasantly surprised to find a reading of the 
proceedings to ·be as timely now as in April 
of 1977, with many of the unanswered ques-
tions still unanswered, and most of the 
adherents to a specific point of view still 
adhering, tenaciously. Of particular interest 
to librarians are the comments of the repre-
sentatives of library interests, which are 
solid and well articulated. This volume is 
one of the better efforts in the plethora of 
publications purporting to explicate this 
complex subject.-Nancy H . Marshall, Uni-
versity of Wisconsin-Madison. 

Seltzer, Leon E. Exemptions and Fair Use 
in Copyright: The Exclusive Rights Ten-
sions in the 1976 Copyright Act. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1978. 
199p. $17.50. LC 77-13676. ISBN 0-674-
27335-4. 
The contents of this book first appeared 

in the April and June 1977 issues of the Bul-
letin of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. 
Seltzer's work is a major contribution to the 
copyright literature, and the publication of 
the text, with the addition of appropriate 
appendixes, in hardbound book form is wel-
come. 

As director of Stanford University Press 
and a member of the California bar, Selt-
zer's perspective on copyright is one deserv-
ing of attention from academic librarians. 
Seltzer is concerned not with the heated 

Recent Publications I 81 

and narrow arguments among librarians, 
publishers, and authors that have sur-
rounded the emergence of the Copyright 
Act of 1976, but rather with analyzing the 
constitutional and theoretical foundations of 
copyright and with formulating an intellec-
tually sound framework for "the continuing 
public policy debate on the proper limits of 
copyright protection." 

Although the Constitution gives Congress 
the power to grant an author the "exclusive 
right" to the use of his or her work, the 
purpose of that right is to benefit society, 
and the right, which is intended to function 
as an economic incentive, is modified by 
two restrictions . One is that of exemptions 
from copyright control made by Congress to 
accommodate competing interests. The 
other is the reading public's implied right to 
use copyrighted materials in certain ways 
without permission, a right that has come to 
be known as "fair use." 

It is' the tensions generated by this 
scheme that are the focus of Seltzer's book. 
Seltzer examines the possible impact of the 
1976 Copyright Act on the workings of 
copyright in the U.S., especially on the 
areas of exempted use and fair use, and 
concludes that the new law does nothing to 
resolve the old problems in these areas and 
has furthermore introduced troublesome 
new problems. 

The first chapter is a lucid, solid, grace-
fully written presentation of the meaning of 
the constitutional copyright clause. Seltzer 
includes a particularly helpful diagrammatic 
portrayal of the different concepts involved 
in the copyright scheme, their economic po-
sition, and how they overlap. Later sections 
of the book thoughtfully and knowledgeably 
examine the library photocopying question, 
in the context of the concepts Seltzer has 
developed. 

Seltzer's cogent, original thinking and 
careful writing shed light in an area suffused 
mostly by heat in the past few years. 
Exemptions and Fair Use in Copyright is 
strongly recommended for academic librar-
ies and librarians. Although readers unfamil-
iar with legal concepts and terminology may 
find parts of this volume somewhat difficult 
reading, it is well worth the intellectual 
effort.-Madeleine Cohen Oakley, Cornell 
University, Ithaca, New York.