University of Tulsa College of Law TU Law Digital Commons Articles, Chapters in Books and Other Contributions to Scholarly Works 2016 The ncoU ordinated Public Domain Robert Spoo Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.law.utulsa.edu/fac_pub Part of the Intellectual Property Law Commons Recommended Citation The ncU oordinated Public Domain, 35 Cardozo Arts and Entertainment Law Journal 107 (2016). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by TU Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles, Chapters in Books and Other Contributions to Scholarly Works by an authorized administrator of TU Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. SPOO ARTICLE (Do Not Delete) 1/18/2017 12:55 PM THE UNCOORDINATED PUBLIC DOMAIN ROBERT SPOO* When nations amend their copyright laws in response to calls for international harmonization, they usually expand authors’ rights without also seeking to harmonize national public domains. Divergent national copyright laws have resulted in an uncoordinated global public domain that renders authors’ works freely available for use in some countries while subjecting them to copyright or moral-rights protection in others. While the fragmented global commons thwarts many valuable uses of cultural resources, it has especially deleterious effects on the ability of researchers to access, copy, and disseminate historical and literary materials, many of which remain unpublished. These effects are mirrored and exacerbated by the inconsistent policies of cultural repositories that control access to millions of documents and images. The uncoordinated public domain shares certain features—notably, fragmented ownership and resource underuse—with an anticommons.