Subject: Article on intellectual property status (from Benton)
Curt Priest (cpriest@juno.com)
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 15:28:22 EDT
To: ROUNDTABLE@CNI.ORG Subject: Article on intellectual property status (from Benton) Message-Id: <19980724.152745.4279.0.cpriest@juno.com> From: cpriest@juno.com (Curt Priest) Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 15:28:22 EDT
Title: Protecting Digital Copyrights
Source: New York Times (A24)
<http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/editorial/24fri1.html>
Author: NYT Editorial Staff
Issue: Copyright
Description: "Traditional copyright concepts that have served this
nation well for centuries should guide the debate on copyright in the
digital universe." This past spring, digital copyright legislation
passed the Senate and House Judiciary Committee that would protect
movies, music and other intellectual property from piracy. But there
continues to be controversy surrounding a provision in the legislation
that would make it a crime to "circumvent encryption used to control
access to digital material or to manufacture or sell devices that could
be used to circumvent protection measures." Music and movie producers
argue that making circumvention illegal is the only way to prevent
consumer theft of their products. But libraries and schools fear that
the prohibition is so broad that their access to electronic information
would be greatly limited in comparison to what the copyright law would
otherwise allow. The existing law ensures producers of artistic
material the right to profit from their creative works, but it does not
allow a creator to control who looks at the material or prevent it from
being lent or circulated to others. Thus a library can purchase a book
patrons can borrow it or a teacher can copy material from it for
classroom use. "Preserving these user rights is important in the
digital world where copyright owners, with the right technology, could
limit or prevent access to information. The content producers dismiss
fears that the Internet could become a strictly pay-for-use world as
unrealistic, but neither they nor Congress can predict how the Internet
will develop. That is why legislation needs to be flexible enough to
deal with rapid evolution in technology and electronic commerce."
W. Curtiss Priest, Director, CITS
Center for Information, Technology & Society
466 Pleasant St., Melrose, MA 02176
Voice: 781-662-4044 BMSLIB@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Fax: 781-662-6882 WWW: http://www.eff.org/pub/Groups/CITS
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