For categories of information that are central to a thriving public life, copyright protection is inherently inappropriate as a default legal status. Access to such information undergirds both discourse and practice in areas such as:
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Provision of justice and legal representation;
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Due process and equal protection of law;
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Technological interoperability, consumer choice, and risks of corporate concentration;
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Innovation, scientific research, and informed consent;
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Cultural education and creativity.
We will explore categories of ideas and information serves such a vital social purpose that legal restraints on public access are counterproductive. Instead, these are the essential building blocks that should form part of a broadly conceived public domain, connected, but not limited to, works whose term has expired and those placed in the public domain by statute.
“[C]opyright assures authors the right to their original [*350] expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work… This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It is the means by which copyright advances the progress of science and art. ”
Feist Publ'ns, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co., 499 U.S. 340, 349-350 (1991)