RE: Slagging Over Sagging CD Sales

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

The issues over security on CD's and other digital content impacts the
library responsibility for preserving content over time. The developments
bear watching closely, as the law and hardware and software available to
us in the next generation of pc's may make some of the functions we can
perform under current copyright law null and void in the so called digital
rights management environment. Technological and legal "solutions" to the
fear of piracy may mean severe technological barriers to long term
preservation and access to many forms of Intellectual Property whose
primary sale or access is in digital form.  In addition to control over
how consumers "listen watch and store their digital media" comes the
ability to make it impossible legally and technically to preserve access
to that same content for future generations. Add to the technological
barriers the massive extension of copyright and I think we have a cultural
disaster in the making, a recipe for loss of our heritage that will be
devastating.

My snips from this article betray my bias--It's not news that the IP
industry wants to control what we can do with "their" content. It is news
that slowly there are begining to be reasonable voices raised against the
industry's attempts to change law and technology to limit use to the uses
IP owners consider legitimate.

I see this issue as part and parcel of the issues we face every day in
licensing digital content. If the current proposals for control of digital
content become the law of the land, our job as repositories and carriers
of culture may be trumped by hardware, software and law. DMCA was just a
beginning for what the intellectual property industry has in store for us
IMO.

You may have to look to Russia in 75 years to have access to Orrin Hatch's
music.


Chuck

-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Anderson
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Sent: 4/19/02 7:41 PM
Subject: RE: Slagging Over Sagging CD Sales

Although I'm not sure what this article has to do with licensing issues in
libraries, I found it interesting.  Especially the parts Chuck snipped
out, which offer the other side's perspective on this contentious issue.

-------------
Rick Anderson
Director of Resource Acquisition
The University Libraries
University of Nevada, Reno        "When you think Phil, you
1664 No. Virginia St.              think hip-hop."
Reno, NV  89557                       -- Phil Donahue
PH  (775) 784-6500 x273
FX  (775) 784-1328
rickand@unr.edu