   The New York Times, December 16, 1996, pp. D1, D6.

   Global Debate Over Treaties On Copyright

   By Denise Caruso

   Will new copyright laws destroy the global village in order
   to save it?

   Delegates to the World Intellectual Property Organization
   of the United Nations who last gathered long before the
   Internet or even the personal computer reached global
   prominence, are now convened in Geneva to decide whether to
   ratify three controversial changes to international
   copyright treaties.

   Intended to crack down on the flow of unauthorized
   information over data networks, two of the treaties --
   dealing with literary and artistic works, and with music
   recordings -- were proposed by the United States Patent and
   Trademark Office.

   The third, which sought to establish a new protection for
   electronic data bases was originally proposed by the
   European Union, it met such strong opposition that it was
   effectively tabled at the end of last week.

   Representing the United States at the meeting, the Patent
   and Trademark Office says its proposals are necessary to
   protect the financial assets of information providers in
   the age of the Internet -- an era in which a single
   keystroke can broadcast information around the world
   without respect to its copyright status.

   But legions of opponents -- including the Library of
   Congress (which administers copyrights), Dun & Bradstreet,
   the National Education Association and the Association for
   Computing -- do not agree with the Patent Office. They
   worry that the new treaties, if adopted, would not be in
   the spirit of American copyright law, which was intended to
   balance profit against society's need for information to
   advance progress in science, education and the arts. (More
   details on dissenters can be found at www.public-domain.org
   and www.ari.net/dfc/.)

   What is more, other critics fear that the rule changes
   would make network service providers responsible for the
   legal status of every electronic communication that passes
   through their systems.

   The American proposals are not new. The Patent Office tried
   last year to win Congressional approval for a set of
   similar changes to domestic copyright law, under failed
   legislation called the National Information Infrastructure
   Copyright Protection Act of 1995.

   But instead of retreating from that failure, the Patent
   Office instead decided to take the matter to Geneva. "If
   this issue is placed in an international context, it
   certainly should be more persuasive" to Congress, the
   Commissioner of Patents, Bruce Lehman, explained in a July
   interview with The New York Times.

   This unprecedented move, as well as the proposals
   themselves, have stirred controversy on both sides of the
   Atlantic.

   For one, if the treaties are ratified in Geneva, there will
   be no further possibility of changing them until the
   organization convenes again, which is usually once every
   decade or so. The only choice left to American lawmakers --
   who already rejected the original bill -- would be a "yea
   or nay" vote on the treaties.

   As for the proposals themselves, critics say they define
   copyright violation far too broadly. Under strict
   interpretation, simply calling up a digitized image or
   article on a computer screen -- the very act that defines
   browsing the Internet -- would constitute creating a
   "copy," even if the information existed only as electrons
   in a computer's memory, or was stored in a temporary bin on
   a viewer's hard disk.

   "On the Internet, then, everyone becomes an infringer,"
   said Mark Radcliffe, a copyright attorney and co-author of
   "The Multimedia Law & Business Handbook."

   The question of who would be responsible for policing this
   new generation of infringers is so troublesome to some
   American executives that last Tuesday; chief executives
   from 11 leading Internet, on-line and communications
   companies sent President Clinton a letter protesting the
   proposed treaty.

   They told Mr. Clinton they were deeply concerned that the
   new treaty would make them responsible for the contents of
   every electronic communication that passed through their
   systems. That responsibility, they argued, would force them
   to monitor all network activity by their customers -- every
   piece of E-mail, every viewing of a Web site, every
   commercial transaction.

   The result, the letter said, would be sharply increased
   costs for Internet and on-line services, less privacy for
   users and "reduced connectivity among 'information
   have-nots' in our society and throughout the world."

   In other words, so much for the global village.

   Given the overwhelming domestic objections to most of the
   treaty proposals, the obvious questions are: Who does
   support them? And why is the United States pushing so hard
   for them in Geneva?

   In fact, the main beneficiaries of the new copyright rules
   are the highest-stake copyright holders: rich, politically
   powerful entertainment and media conglomerates, which fear
   that pirated material will destroy the lucrative
   international market for products that can be digitally
   copied and distributed globally.

   According to many intellectual property experts who have
   tracked digital copyright issues over the years, these
   companies have kept a low public profile, influencing the
   political process through lobbyists and industry
   organizations.

   But for those concerned about the privacy implications of
   these proposals, the Administration's push to get them
   adopted is troubling, especially when viewed alongside
   other pieces of digital network legislation, like the
   Communications Decency Act, an Internet censorship law.

   Enforcing a proposed global copyright protection treaty
   would almost certainly require some sophisticated form of
   user monitoring, here and abroad.

   Critics of the proposed copyright restrictions ask: Why not
   put the burden of protecting digital material on the
   entertainment companies who profit from it?

   Many other forms of intellectual property, including movies
   transmitted over cable television networks, are already
   protected by various technological means.

   In the digital world, computer software companies are
   already effectively using various data encryption
   technologies to protect their products for distribution
   over the network. And if progress to date is any
   indication, these technologies will become even more
   sophisticated and effective over time.

   But if the Internet is instead governed by overly broad
   copyright laws and enforcement techniques, the network may
   end up being a safer place for "The Lion King" than for the
   people who use it.

   [End]







