160 Nations Meet To Weigh Revision Of Copyright Law
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Copyright laws are under technological siege. Intended to insure both a financial return to those who create everything from poetry to computer software and reasonable public access to such material, the current laws may be unequal to the task. Copies of the latest Madonna song, a computer spreadsheet or a telephone directory can all be duplicated and distributed on the Internet at the click of a computer mouse, often with little regard for the legal rights of the owners of their copyrights. Now, for the first time in the age of the personal computer and the Internet, copyright experts from 160 countries are gathering in Switzerland today to begin to write new international treaties protecting intellectual property in the digital age. One treaty proposal is directed at the protection of literary and artistic works, another at music recording or phonograms, and a third tries for the first time to establish copyright protections for data bases. Delegates to the World Intellectual Property Organization diplomatic conference in Geneva, which concludes Dec. 20, hope to agree on one or more global pacts to update copyright laws for an era in which anything that can be copyrighted can be digitized, and anything that can be digitized can be distributed almost instantly around the world. The United States expects to play an aggressive role in setting the digital agenda, though it is not clear whether it will carry the day. Its delegation, led by Bruce Lehman, the Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks, will offer three proposals to protect literary and artistic works, music recordings and data bases from unauthorized use. The Clinton Administration and the film and recording industries are strong supporters of these proposals, while an array of academic, scientific, consumer and technical organizations have come out in opposition. Some of the problems involved are encapsulated in the furor created recently when the cartoonist Gary Larson sent on-line fans — in countries ranging from Australia to Switzerland — a general plea to stop duplicating his work. ”Please, please refrain from putting ‘The Far Side’ out on the Internet,” Mr. Larson wrote recently in an electronic-mail message to several fans who had collected, digitized and electronically published his works for all to enjoy. ”These cartoons are my children, of sorts, and like a parent, I’m concerned about where they go at night without telling me. And, seeing them at someone’s Web site is like getting the call at 2:00 A.M. that goes, ‘Uh, Dad, you’re not going to like this much, but guess where I am.’ ” While several operators honored Mr. Larson’s wishes and removed his cartoons, the reaction of the Internet community was indicative of the ethos of those users accustomed to the free flow of information. ”All this copyright infringement enforcing ticks me off,” one unidentified computer user wrote on the same site as the Larson posting. ”What good is the Net for if we can’t view a Far Side cartoon, or listen to a sound file from the Simpsons, or perhaps, dare I say it, look at a picture from a scanned magazine!” Supporters of the American proposals say such attitudes are a main reason that changes in international copyright law are needed to halt the growing international trend to pirate billions of dollars worth of intellectual property. Without stronger protections, they argue, there will be no incentive to develop new material to sate the appetite of the emerging global information infrastructure. More : query.nytimes.com |