TechTalks Event
Update on Copyright and Intellectual Property Issues
with guest expert Rodney Petersen of the University of Maryland�
February 21, 2002
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2001 was the year that copyright law got exciting. One of the major sources of the excitement was the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and, in particular, Section 1201, the "anti-circumvention" provision of the Act. This provision makes it a crime to provide the means for circumventing a publisher's copyright-protection technology. In July, the FBI arrested Dmitry Sklyarov, a Russian computer scientist, because he had written a program that could transform an Adobe eBook into a generic PDF file. He remained in jail for three weeks, and the case is still active. In late November, a U. S. District Court told Eric Corley that publishing instructions for decrypting DVD disks was likewise illegal. And also in late November, another court refused relief to Princeton Professor Edward W. Felten, who complained that threats of lawsuits by the Recording Industry Association of America and others were hampering his research and had already forced him to cancel presentation of one of his papers at a scientific conference. All three men will likely find their cases decided by the Supreme Court.
More intro below! Guest Expert
Rodney
Petersen is the Director of Policy and Planning in the Office
of Information Technology at the University of Maryland. He is also
the founder of Project NEThics - a group whose mission is to ensure
responsible use of information technology through user education
and enforcement of acceptable use guidelines. He is currently on
a part-time assignment with EDUCAUSE to support the efforts of the
Computer and Network Security Task Force. He testified on behalf
of the national library associations before the United States Copyright
Office in the rulemaking process under the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act. He also provided testimony as part of the recent Section 104
study that concerned digital first sale. He was active in the public
policy debates surrounding the introduction and passage of the Uniform
Computer Information Transactions Act in the Maryland General Assembly
and continues to track its developments elsewhere.
His current research focuses on policies and practices concerning copyright ownership at research Universities. He is a frequent speaker on copyright policy issues, including sessions at the annual Stetson Conference on Higher Education Law and Policy and the Cornell University Computer Policy and Law Seminar. He also led an interactive seminar on "Faculty Ownership" for a web-based workshop series offered by the Center for Intellectual Property and Copyright in the Digital Environment that was co-sponsored by the University of Maryland University College and Association of Research Libraries (ARL). He received his law degree from Wake Forest University. More information is available at http://www.oit.umd.edu/~rodney.
Co-Hosts
Howard Strauss (above, left), Manager of Academic Applications
at Princeton University, is TechTalk's Technology Anchor.
Judith Boettcher, CREN's Executive Director, will not be
part of the audiocast this week.
Steve Worona, of EDUCAUSE, is sitting in this week for Judith
Boettcher.
Together, Howard and Steve will ask the really tough questions—and
relay the questions you email to them at expert@cren.net.
Background & Resources
Previous Tech Talks on related topics are always a good reference. In the area of this Tech Talk's topic, you can listen to or read the transcript of these and other events:
- Where Is the Digital Library? with Clifford Lynch.
- Digital Millennium Copyright Act with Laura Gasaway.
- More in our online archives.
It has been suggested that this News.com editorial by Congressman Rick Boucher of Virginia is a good background reference for our forthcoming Tech Talk.
Red Rock Eater News - is a mailing list organized by Phil Agre of UCLA. Subscribers to the list receive about five messages a week. The messages have no single format; they simply contain whatever he finds interesting. There is no better list to be on in order to stay current with what's happening with regard to "social and political aspects of computing and networking," with lots of hyperlinks to online news and resources about copyright, intellectual property, and privacy issues. There is, in addition, an extensive list of resources linked off the RRE website, including links to some unofficial archives.
The EDUCAUSE Information Resources Library yields hundreds of documents when searched for key words and phrases related to this Tech Talk event.
EDUCAUSE also collects and publishes collections of knowledge related to "Current Issues." There are excellent resources available in that portion of the EDUCAUSE website on Faculty Intellectual Property Rights: A Debate for the Electronic Age and on The Digital Millennium Copyright Act .
Some Additional Links
-
Higher Education
- American Library Association (ALA) Washington Office Resources: Copyright
- Association of American Universities (AAU) Resources: Intellectual Property Issues
- Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Resources: Copyright and Intellectual Property
- Center for Intellectual Property and Copyright in the Digital Environment
- EDUCAUSE
Resources: Intellectual Property and Copyright
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Legislative and Regulatory References
- U.S. Copyright Office Section 104 Report
- Technology, Education, And Copyright Harmonization Act of 2001 (�TEACH Act�)
- Uniform
Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) according to Americans
for Fair Electronic Commerce Transactions (AFFECT)
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Recent Case Law
- Kelley vs. Arriba (9th Circuit)
- New York Times vs. Tasini (U.S. Supreme Court)
- Universal City vs. Reimerdes (2nd Circuit)
(from above) All three men will likely find their cases decided by the Supreme Court.
The DMCA was not the only reason that 2001 stands as a watershed year for Copyright law. On June 25, the Supreme Court decided a case called Tasini v. the New York Times, telling the Times that some of the material in its online, full-text searchable archives was there illegally. The free-lance authors, said the Court, hadn't specifically given the newspaper the right to include their work in such a database. The winners of the case - represented by Jonathan Tasini, President of the National Writers Union - expected that the Times, along with many other publications in the same position - would simply agree to additional payments, and if that had been the outcome, we wouldn't be talking about the case today. Instead, though, the publishers removed the disputed material from the online files, making it unavailable not just to the casual reader, but also to scholars now and in the future. Researchers are still assessing the loss.
In Congress, the TEACH Act passed the Senate in June, but even before the events of 9/11, it ran into unexpected delays in the House of Representatives. The TEACH Act would make it easier for instructors to use electronic material in distance learning, and many eyes in higher education are watching its progress. At the same time, they are watching two other bills introduced in 2001. Sen. Fritz Hollings has proposed something called the "Security Systems Standardsband Certification Act", under which every device containing a computer chip - from laptops to TVs to network routers - would be required to incorporate copyright- protection software. But on the other hand, Rep. Rick Boucher is working on a bill that would amend the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions to focus on illegitimate use of circumvention software and not the software itself.
Copyright law exists to balance two sets of rights: The right of those who produce intellectual property to profit from their work, and the right of the public to a free flow of information. In the world of paper documents, the balance has been established and adjusted and adjusted again over hundreds of years. Libraries exist only because U. S. Copyright law recognizes the "first sale principle", under which the person who buys a book can loan it to someone else. Drama and literary critics and scholars can quote from the works they're reviewing because the law recognizes a "fair use" doctrine, which values a reviewer's commentary over an author's desire to silence that commentary. What are the electronic versions of first sale and fair use? As highlighted above, in 2001 we've seen court cases and Congressional action that address the question. In addition, in August, the U. S. Copyright Office issued a report examining the impact of the DMCA on first sale and fair use and found "no convincing evidence of present-day problems". Many who followed the events of 2001 were not nearly so comfortable.
