Kenneth D. Crews, JD, PhD

Kenneth D. Crews is an attorney, author, professor, and international copyright consultant. For over 25 years, his research, policymaking, and teaching have centered on copyright issues related to education and research. Professor Crews established and directed the nation's first university-based copyright office at Indiana University and later established the office at Columbia University. He is now based in Los Angeles, California.  Dr. Crews has shared his copyright message in more than 30 countries and in 45 states (care to guess the missing five??).  Kenny Crews was the first recipient of the Patterson Copyright Award from the American Library Association, and he received the Mark T. Banner Award from the American Bar Association in 2014. He is the author of numerous publications including Copyright Law for Librarians and Educators (4th ed, 2020), published by the American Library Association in February.

Copyright of 1976, Plus Fifty Years: We Hardly Knew What Slipped Away

The fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the Copyright Act of 1976 has afforded multiple opportunities to reflect on the growth and change in copyright law.  Many changes have been enormous: The transformation of fair use; the conversion of duration rules; the integration of international standards; and the expanding scope of legally protected works.  More fundamentally, the Copyright Act has grown dramatically in length through five decades.  Hidden within the elaborate acts of Congress that have continuously modified and expanded intellectual property laws have been provisions that, in effect, have made pieces of the American copyright statutes vanish.  Sometimes the negative space of copyright can tell its own stories and reveal how lawmakers have understood a half century of copyright’s connection to technology, treaties, markets, money, and even private family life.