Ezra Pound's Copyright Statute: Perpetual Rights and the Problem of Heirs

60 Pages Posted: 22 Oct 2008 Last revised: 3 May 2017

See all articles by Robert E. Spoo

Robert E. Spoo

University of Tulsa College of Law

Date Written: October 17, 2008

Abstract

This Article explores the historical and present-day significance of proposals for copyright reform advanced by the controversial American poet, Ezra Pound, in 1918. These proposals have never been discussed by legal scholars and have received but scant attention from literary scholars. Yet, like William Wordsworth and Mark Twain, whose efforts to reform copyright law are much better known, Pound is a major writer whose views shed considerable light on the state of copyright law and the conditions of authorship in his time. Pound's proposed statute-offered as a "cure" for American book piracy-begins by making authors' copyrights exclusive and perpetual, and goes on, surprisingly, to introduce broad compulsory-license provisions that would prevent authors and their heirs from interfering with later efforts to disseminate authors' works, and would require publishers only to pay a fixed royalty on sales. The tension in Pound's proposal between a perpetual, exclusive copyright and expansive compulsory licenses shows him to be an inheritor of two legal and economic traditions: on the one hand, a Lockean and Romantic belief in a strong property rule grounded in an author's natural rights and unique personality, and, on the other, an anti-monopoly, free-trade preference for a liability rule that would encourage wide dissemination of affordable works to serve the public interest. As the author of such a dual-purpose proposal, Pound emerges as remarkably and presciently alert to the dangers currently posed by lengthy copyright terms unaccompanied by limitations that adequately protect the public. Today, the estates of James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, Samuel Beckett, and other modernist authors use extended copyrights to discourage or control use of those authors' works by scholars, critics, and others. Pound's perpetual, royalty-based copyright would, in principle, have removed or reduced such obstacles to the study and enjoyment of modernist authors. Moreover, Pound's draft statute anticipates recent proposals by Richard Posner, Lawrence Lessig, and others for mitigating the conflict between the lengthy copyright monopoly and the needs of the public.

Keywords: copyright, intellectual property, modernism, law and literature, compulsory license

Suggested Citation

Spoo, Robert E., Ezra Pound's Copyright Statute: Perpetual Rights and the Problem of Heirs (October 17, 2008). UCLA Law Review, Vol. 56, 2009, University of Tulsa Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2009-04, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1286233

Robert E. Spoo (Contact Author)

University of Tulsa College of Law ( email )

3120 E. Fourth Place
Tulsa, OK 74104
United States

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