Background from moderator:
The Clinton Administration has released a major statement on copyright
in electronic media. This comes from the same group that released a
Green Paper on copyright in July 1994, criticized by legal expert
Pamele Samuelson in the Communications of the ACM.
The stated goal of the administration group is to promote more online
publication by protecting the ability of publishers to control
distribution. Critics say that the proposal intrudes on the rights of
users and is much more restrictive than current copyright law. You
can learn more from the article that follows in this mail message
(thanks to Curtis Priest for circulating it). But the article says
nothing about criticism of the policy. Curtiss comments:
In our experience, a red flag goes up whenever industry gives a
10 rating to a government report. Copyright is a balancing act
between holding property and making it available for free speech
and other areas of Fair Use. Also, as Joseph Dionne demonstrated
in a speech before the Industry Information Association 10/27/94
-- industry favors law that protects the current players, and
thus, we should look to see how well this draft encourages "new
entrants" into publishing! How easy is it for a new entrant to
gain rights to make derivative works and at what cost?
Unfortunately, on this critical cyber-rights issue, nothing
substitutes for at least skimming the entire 250-page paper. I find
it very readable, but it's quite long and the new ideas come pretty
far along. So even though it's online, you'll be doing yourself a
favor to order a paper copy (free). The paper version can be obtained
by writing to address below and asking for "Intellectual Property and
the National Information Infrastructure: The Report of the Working
Group on Intellectual Property Rights."
"Intellectual Property and the NII"
c/o Terri A. Southwick, Attorney-Advisor
Office of Legislative and International Affairs
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
Box 4
Washington, D.C. 20231
To see the paper with a Web browser, enter the URL:
gopher://ntiant1.ntia.doc.gov:70/00/papers/documents/files/ipnii.txt
If you prefer to use gopher, go to site iitf.doc.gov. Then choose:
1. Hot Off the Press! new items/
followed by:
2. 09/05/95 Intellectual Property WG Report (570K)(NEW 09-05-95)
You may be interested in seeing an earlier Administration statement
at:
http://ntiaunix1.ntia.doc.gov:70/0/advcouncil/niiac_greenpaper_resp.txt
and Samuelson's critique at:
http://gnn.interpath.net/gnn/meta/imedia/features/copyright/samuelson.html
Andy
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WASHINGTON -- The Commerce Department is suggesting that the nation's
copyright laws be beefed up to protect ''content'' on the information highway
-- including a recommendation that the theft of more than $5,000 of copyright
material on-line be made a criminal offense.
The proposal addresses growing complaints from software companies and other
content publishers that say their information is stolen through on-line
bulletin boards and on the Internet, cutting into their profits.
In a 250-page report released Tuesday, the Commerce Department also said
Congress should make it illegal for people to produce or use any technology
whose main purpose is to defeat copy protection or use restrictions for
on-line work.
Commerce Secretary Ron Brown said changes to the existing copyright law that
specifically address how to protect intellectual property in electronic form
-- such as on-line software or news articles -- would provide a significant
boost to the commercialization of the growing information superhighway.
''The way you expand use is to make sure you have content,'' Brown said at a
news conference Tuesday. ''And the way you make sure you have content is to
provide protection for the works.''
Without changes that guarantee copyright holders can control who uses their
material, and how, the development of the cyberspace marketplace will be
stymied and computer networks will be just communications devices, he said.
Representatives of on-line services, such as CompuServe and America Online,
expressed some reservations about the report. They are unhappy it didn't call
for legislation eliminating any potential liability for them when their
subscribers commit copyright violations.
The Commerce Department has forwarded its recommendations in the form of
proposed legislation to Capitol Hill. The goal is to get congressional
hearings soon and action by the end of 1996, said Bruce A. Lehman,
commissioner of patents and trademarks and chair of the group that wrote the
report.
The report calls mostly for strengthening copyright protections. But it also
concludes that libraries and schools should get special treatment for the use
of on-line information, a bow to concerns the information superhighway would
prove too expensive for such institutions.
The software industry hailed the report as a significant step toward
addressing its concerns over how to protect programs and on-line information
from unauthorized use.
''On a scale of one to 10, this is a 10,'' said Ken Wasch, executive director
of the Software Publishers Association. ''This report gives a clear
definition of the protection of (electronic) transmissions and making it
illegal to interfere with copyright management systems.''
The Clinton administration has spent more than a year studying some of the
stickier problems of adapting a print-based copyright law to the electronic
age.
The ability of computers to make near-instant, perfect copies of a book or
video clip, combined with the ability of computer networks to make the copies
available immediately to millions of people around the world, has created
consternation among major copyright holders. They worry their work will be
widely distributed by computer users, but that they won't be paid for it.
Indeed, software companies have long been plagued by ''pirate'' bulletin
boards, whose owners put illicit copies of popular software on-line and give
it away or sell it to users. The publisher of the software doesn't get any of
the money and loses a potential sale.
Computer users, too, have historically fought technologies to prevent illegal
copying of software. Many companies used such techniques in the mid-1980s,
but dropped them under pressure from consumers who found them burdensome or
onerous.
With the explosion of the Internet, however, far more information of various
types has found its way on-line, increasing the demand from industry for some
change in the copyright law, last amended in the 1970s.
''People who have the content and intellectual ideas need to be given the
sense over time that there will be protection for their ideas,'' said Ken
Kay, chairman of the Creative Incentive Coalition, a Washington lobbying
group for publishers, television producers and software companies.
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Posted by -- Andrew Oram -- •••@••.••• -- Cambridge, Mass., USA
Moderator: CYBER-RIGHTS (CPSR)
World Wide Web:
http://jasper.ora.com/andyo/cyber-rights/cyber-rights.html
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~hwh6k/public/cyber-rights.html
FTP:
ftp://jasper.ora.com/pub/andyo/cyber-rights
You are encouraged to forward and cross-post messages and online materials,
pursuant to any contained copyright & redistribution restrictions.
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