Why President Ford Belongs On Copyright's Mount Rushmore

By David Kluft (February 15, 2018, 12:38 PM EST) -- Many of the American presidents we traditionally honor on Presidents' Day (coming up Monday) have had important roles in the development of U.S. copyright law. Abraham Lincoln, the first president to make extensive use of photographic images for political purposes, was also the president who signed into law the 1865 Act to Amend Several Acts respecting Copyright, which extended copyright protection to photographs. Before that, George Washington's correspondence was the subject matter of the 1841 case of Folsom v. Marsh, in which U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story (sitting as a circuit court judge for the District of Massachusetts) first articulated for American copyright holders what was to become the doctrine of "fair use."...

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