Copyright Act Revisions

In “Turn Theft Into a Net Gain” (editorial, May 23) you wrote: “If there’s a lesson from the Grokster ruling, it’s that U.S. copyright laws -- crafted early last century to protect the sheet music industry from the player piano -- can’t keep up in the 21st century.” While your statement is an accurate description of the 1909 Copyright Act, Congress enacted an entirely revised Copyright Act in 1976, and the 1976 act has been amended more than a dozen times since. The current Copyright Act may be outdated in some respects, but it is misleading to suggest that it is almost a century old.

Tyler T. Ochoa

Professor, Center for

Intellectual Property Law

Whittier Law School