NYNCH / CAA
Copyright Town Meeting
Rights in Digital Publishing
Saturday, February 22, 2003
Co-Sponsored by the CAA Committee on Intellectual Property and
National Initiative on Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH),
David Green, Executive Director
Underwritten by a generous grant from Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman, New York

Digital Publishing:
A Practical Guide to the Problem of Intellectual Property Rights in the Electronic Environment, for Artists, Museums, Authors, Publishers, Readers and Users.

Town Meeting Welcome, by Robert A. Baron

On behalf of the College Art Association’s Committee on Intellectual Property, I wish to welcome you to this, the sixth Copyright Town Meeting to be held under the dual auspices of NINCH – The National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage and College Art.

We’ve been at it for a long time, and I can attest to the marvelous run of topics that we’ve covered. It all began at the February 1997 CAA meeting. We convened on a Sunday at the Cooper Union College – not at all close to our Hilton venue. Notice was given only a single day in advance, and even then we filled the spacious hall assigned to us. The topic was the Fair Use of copyrighted works in education. And, after all these years, through so much legislation and tribulation, here we are, still tackling fair use, though it seems more under fire than ever before.

Through all this David Green has been our muse, our mentor, even, at times, our taskmaster. But, most importantly, David is one of the few people who could connect all the dots in an undertaking of this magnitude and significance. And I’m not just considering the CAA events, but also the NINCH Town Meetings co-sponsored by so many other diverse intellectual organizations, including the American Association of Museums, the Visual Resources Association, the Museum Computer Network, the Art Libraries Association, and the New York Public Library, to name just the few sponsors to whose meetings I managed to attend.

I’m reminiscing here because with this meeting I am relinquishing my chairmanship of the Committee on Intellectual Property; and while I’m happy (even relieved, somewhat) to hand its varied responsibilities to the capable and imaginative Patricia Failing, I want to be sure to take this opportunity here, in public, and personally to thank David for guiding, us molding us, and for creating this wonderful forum in which such a broad spectrum of views, ably presented, would reach their varied audiences. Indeed, nobody chosen to speak at any Town Meeting was ever fully confident that he would be preaching to the choir. In fact, we had our share of mud fights.

Before David kicks me off the stage for speaking too long, I want to take this opportunity to present David with some slight token of my appreciation. I know that I would embarrass him if I showed up with something of significant value. So, instead, we’ll go for something cost-free, of hopefully not cheap symbolism. In view of my own pessimistic view of the direction in which our information culture is headed, I wish to offer David this unique anonymously published fair use edition of, perhaps the best known novel of pessimistic prognostication: George Orwell’s famous 1984. I’ve been saving this item for over twenty years, all this time successfully keeping it out of the hands of rare book dealers; and now I figured out how to use it. David, here is what 1984 might look like in 2048. I hope you learn to cherish this gem as did I.

ed: David was given a mock-up of Orwell's 1984 that was composed of a printed cover binding a Styrofoam block, originally made to inhabit a bookshelf in a furniture store.