House Reaches Compromise on Digital Copyright Law

July 18, 1998

House Reaches Compromise on Digital Copyright Law

By JERI CLAUSING
ASHINGTON - The House Commerce Committee on Friday resolved one of the chief hurdles over legislation to protect intellectual property in the computer age, passing a bill that would establish a review process to ensure that new digital prohibitions don't trample on the "fair use" doctrines of traditional copyright law.
The legislation to carry out two world treaties on digital copyrights has already passed the Senate and the House Judiciary Committee. It has been a priority for movie and record producers and for software makers. But the Commerce Committee has struggled for the past month to craft a "fair use" compromise between those interests and schools and libraries, who feared they could lose the right to do things as simple as making copies of electronic works.

Related Articles
CyberTimes Coverage of Copyright Issues
Forum
Copyright on the Internet

The different sides struck a deal early Friday morning, and the Commerce Committee on a 41-to-0 vote sent the amended version to the House floor. Before the House can vote, however, lawmakers must reconcile the bill with the earlier version approved by the Judiciary Committee.

The legislation, called the WIPO Copyright Treaties Implementation Act, was introduced nearly a year ago to carry out two world treaties designed to protect music, movies and other intellectual property from piracy. The act would outlaw the devices used to circumvent the encryption that is used protect the property in digital and electronic form. It also would outlaw the simple act of circumventing those technologies.
While the provision were designed to protect software and digital copies of music and videos from increasing Internet piracy, a number of groups expressed concerns that the blanket prohibitions would outlaw current fair uses.

Earlier, amendments were added to allow software developers and researchers to use the device for encryption research and to make sure software was compatible with other products. But concerns remained that the blanket prohibition on the act of circumvention would outlaw things like making copies of an electronic or digital document in a school or library.
Ultimately, the libraries feared such safeguards could be used to create pay-per-use works that they could no longer lend to their patrons free.
Publishers said a ban was needed because thieves would use any legal circumvention techniques or software to make illegal copies.

The compromise amendment by Representative Scott Klug a Wisconsin Republican, would delay the anti-circumvention rule for two years while the Commerce Secretary reviews the problem. After two years, the anti-circumvention rule would go into effect. But at that time and again every two years, the Secretary could waive the rule for any class of works where technological safeguards were harming the ability of users to access works for lawful purposes.
"In short this amendment establishes a framework that recognizes both the concern of information users to be able to access information and the ability of copyright owners to protect the fruits of their creativity," Klug said.
"I think it goes long way to guarantee that in the new age in which we have unlimited access to information that we make sure that access doesn't come with a price that short-circuits university and library research."

Related Sites
Following are links to the external Web sites mentioned in this article. These sites are not part of The New York Times on the Web, and The Times has no control over their content or availability. When you have finished visiting any of these sites, you will be able to return to this page by clicking on your Web browser's "Back" button or icon until this page reappears.

House Commerce Committee

House Judiciary Committee

Representative Scott Klug

Jeri Clausing at jeri@nytimes.com welcomes your comments and suggestions.

Help/Feedback | Classifieds | Services | New York Today