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Re: COPYRIGHT ISSUES: Forwarded message: Defeat New Copyright Legislation 

	I have now obtained the authors permission to post the entire text
of the Boston Globe article that I mentioned in a previous posting.  A
number of people emailed me to indicate that a URL that I had quoted from
a posting in the CNI-COPYRIGHT LISTSERV was incorrect.  There should also
be a full text version of the article in the WWW archives of the
CNI-COPYRIGHT LISTSERV where the poster was Terry Carroll.  The CNI
archives are found at URL: http://www.cni.org/Hforms/cni-copyright.  I
hope that all of you find this article useful in explaining the impact
upon the public and upon internet users of the proposed copyright,
software and database law currently before Congress.  You will find the
text of the article below. 

Sincerely,
David Dillard
Temple University
(215) 204 - 4584
jwne@astro.temple.edu


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 25 May 1998 13:44:43 -0400
From: "Simson L. Garfinkel" <simsong@vineyard.net>
To: "David P. Dillard" <jwne@astro.ocis.temple.edu>
Subject: Re: COPYRIGHT ISSUES: Forwarded message: Defeat New Copyright
		Legislation   

Glad you were able to post it. What URL did you use? The correct URL should
be at http://simson.net/clips and then some filename which I can't remember
off hand.

Please feel free to post the full text. It's an important issue, although
the article is getting dated as the legislation has passed the senate and is
moving through the meat mill.

>Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 23:27:53 -0400
>From: "Simson L. Garfinkel" <simsong@vineyard.net>
>Subject: Defeat New Copyright Legislation
>
>[This is Simson's article in *The Boston Globe*, 7 May 1998.  PGN]
>
>Two bills that are up for a vote in the House of Representatives could
>seriously jeopardize the right of Americans to read in the next century.
>The backers of these bills say that the legislation is necessary to
>protect the interests of creative individuals and publishers in the
>digital age.  But the legislation goes further by allow publishers to
>repeal the "fair use" provisions of today's copyright law and creating
>a whole new category of intellectual property.
>
>The first bill, strongly backed by the Clinton Administration, is the
>"WIPO Copyright Treaties Implementation Act," (H. R. 2281).  This bill
>is designed to implement sections of the World Intellectual Property
>Organization treaty that was adopted back in December 1996.  The bill
>creates a new kind of crime in US law, the crime of "circumvention."
>It's a kind of crime that one would expect in George Orwell's 1984,
>rather than in the America of the next century.
>
>H.R. 2281 is being supported by big publishing interests including Time
>Warner, Viacom, the Motion Picture Association of America, and
>Microsoft.  These organizations are terrified by the way computers and
>digital networks make it easy to copy books, songs, videos and computer
>programs.  For years these groups have tried to stop illegal copying
>with copy-protection systems.  H.R. 2281 would make it a crime to
>subvert these systems for any purpose whatsoever.
>
>The problem with this legislation, says Adam Eisgrau, Legislative
>Counsel of the American Library Association's Washington Office, is that
>many publishers are likely to use copy-protection systems to restrict
>activities that are otherwise lawful.
>
>For example, many web sites on the Internet today as you to register
>with your name and e-mail address before you can view the information
>that they contain.  A substantial number of people bristle at this
>notion, and they have figured out ways to circumvent the registration
>process.  Under the legislation, these people could be sued and awarded
>$200 to $2,500 in statutory damages for each web page that they viewed.
>
>And its not just consumer groups that are upset about the legislation.
>As it currently exists, the legislation would make it a felony for
>engineers to open up competing products and see how they work---
>"something that is essential for achieving interoperability in the
>industry," says Lowell Sachs, the government affairs representative of
>Sun Microsystems.  "So far, the House has failed to focus upon the very
>real threat that its actions could pose to competition and innovation in
>the United State."
>
>The criminal provisions of H.R. 2281 apply even if the offender is
>legally entitled to the information that is under copyright management
>control.  For example, the Supreme Court has ruled that individuals have
>a right to record movies off the air and view them at a later time.
>Nevertheless, the film industry doesn't want us to make our own
>tapes---they want us to buy pre-recorded tapes.  In the future, the film
>industry might create a new copyright protection system that prevents
>home taping off the Internet unless a person pays an additional fee.
>Under the proposed legislation, a person who circumvented this new
>copy-protection system and made their own legal home copy would
>nevertheless be guilty of circumvention, and potentially subject to a
>fine of $500,000 and 5 years imprisonment for the first offense.
>
>The author of the bill "are very clever," says Adam Eisgrau.  "They
>don't repeal the legal basis of fair use," which would create a huge
>political outcry.  Instead, the legislation "creates a new law which
>makes fair use impossible to exercise, unless the appropriate price is
>paid." And that's not Fair Use at all.
>
>The second bill that should give lawmakers pause is H.R. 2652, the
>"Collections of Information Antipiracy Act."  This law, if passed, would
>give legal protection to the contents of databases over and above what
>is provided by today's copyright law.
>
>The database law finds its genesis in a 1991 Supreme Court decision,
>Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., in which the
>Court ruled that the factual information in a telephone white pages---a
>large database of names, addresses and phone numbers---cannot be
>copyrighted.  This decision is one of the key factors responsible for
>the proliferation of "white pages" services on the Internet like
>Switchboard.COM.
>
>H.R. 2652 would basically overturn the Feist decision, making it a
>crime to extract date from a "collection of information" and use it
>in a way that harms the real or potential economic interest of the
>collection's owner.  One of the fundamental problems with this bill,
>says the EFF, is that there's no limit to the kind of information that
>can receive protection once it is put into a databank.  In particular,
>government information and information that's in that's already in the
>public domain could be dropped into a computerized databank and then
>receive new, copyright-like protections.  And the Act doesn't have any
>exemptions for "fair use."
>
>So how could all of this impact on our right to read?  Just ask Richard
>Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation.  In his story "The
>Right To Read," Stallman argues convincingly that new restrictions on
>information will ultimately force people to pay for every book and
>article that they read, whether they are at home, at work, or at school.
>
>Stallman's story is a science fiction parable in which one college
>student risks imprisonment by lending his computer to his girlfriend and
>telling her his password---in effect, giving her access to books that he
>has licensed for himself.  "Dan knew she came from a middle-class family
>and could hardly afford the tuition, let alone her reading fees.
>Reading his books might be the only way she could graduate," Stallman
>writes.  You can find the entire story at
>http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
>
>Indeed, if you want find out more about these issues, there's no better
>place to turn than the Web.  A group opposed to the legislation called
>the Digital Future Coalition has put together a website at
>http://www.dfc.org/ explaining the problems.  Meanwhile, a group of
>publishers have banded together and created their own competing group,
>the Creative Incentive Coalition.  You can find its website at
>http://www.cic.org/.  Finally, you can download the full text of these
>bills from the Library of Congress's Thomas system at
>http://thomas.loc.gov/.
>
>But hurry, while you still have a right to read.

end of article


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