Rights and Responsibilities of Participants in Networked Communities (1994) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 85-98
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From page 85... ...
What is the analog of physical space in a medium in which physical space has lost its traditional meaning? Before networking became common, the concept of trespass could be applied to an unauthorized user sitting at a terminal hard-wired to a mainframe.
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From page 86... ...
Pop music is created through "sampling" of other compositions, a practice of debatable legality that has parallels in electronic communications. National approaches to property protection differ, while the status of international copyright law is somewhat murky)
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From page 87... ...
In July 1994, the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights of the administration's Information Infrastructure Task Force released a draft report on how copyright law and practices may need to be updated in an age of highly interconnected electronic networks. The report proposes, for example, that existing law be clarified to ensure that copyright law protects the creator of works that are disseminated through electronic networks.3 Although intellectual property is traditionally the domain of copyright, patents, and trade secrets, most of the discussion of intellectual prop 2For example, a recent CSTB study, Realizing the Information Future: The Internet and Beyond (National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 1994)
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From page 88... ...
The original expression of information in databases can be copyrighted, though the facts themselves cannot, a position reinforced by the Supreme Court decision in Feist v. Rural Telephone (see Chapter 3~.
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From page 89... ...
Nevertheless, at least some network operators, r~otably commercial information services, strive to keep copyrighted materials off their networks. Commercial software is fairly easy to identify and remove, but graphics are more difficult, according to Stephen M
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From page 90... ...
Robert A Simons, general counsel and secretary for DIALOG Information Services, said universities have a duty to comply with their subscription agreements; the question is whether their controls are reasonable and, if a student somehow bypasses reasonable controls, whether the university has violated the contract.
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From page 91... ...
So RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES IN NETWORKED COMMUNITIES University, was concerned about the need to be responsive to copyright issues and said that expectations of behavior can be conveyed through policy guidelines, faculty contracts, and student codes of conduct; once such expectations are conveyed, the personal responsibility for appropriate use rests with individuals. Beyond that, she was concerned about the prospect of being asked to enforce certain types of contractual provisions having to do with access, pointing out the difficulty of doing so as well as the concern for privacy rights.
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From page 92... ...
Pamela Samuelson, a professor of intellectual property law at the University of Pittsburgh, expressed concern about requiring users to know and abide by all the details of many different licensing agreements. She agreed that universities should foster discussions and establish guidelines regarding appropriate behavior on electronic networks, suggesting that universities help foster a consensus about what is "reasonable within that environment." Plesser and Simons said current copyright law works fairly well in the electronic environment, though improvements are certainly possible.
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From page 93... ...
Thus, David Johnson wondered "if the copyright statutes that arose out of the print mechanisms are themselves becoming hopelessly outdated." He went on to note that we may need to "give up on an effort to protect particular artifacts of electronic text as if they were property and instead focus on how to control access to information through particular channels"; the proper route, he said, was to address "the repetitive distribution of information through channels like libraries and universities and institutions" and what that type of distribution would do to the nature of life in the affected communities. Licensing agreements for the use of electronic documents alter a university's approach to discipline significantly, by effectively imposing a new definition of fair use,9 according to Martin.
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From page 94... ...
address fair use in library photocopying, there appears to be no legal precedent for electronic networks. "I think [fair use]
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From page 95... ...
In running a legal information institute at Cornell that distributes materials on the Internet, Martin finds that many individuals are afraid to contribute because any contribution they make can be appropriated by others: "They consider it like dumping some valuable watches into Central Park [they] will be gone." He also discerned considerable confusion over the application of copyright law on electronic networks, particularly with regard to how copyrighted information may be used without the author's permission.
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From page 96... ...
Simons views the export issue as so important that his licensing agreements often require publishers to refrain from using any material that would constitute "encryption data" under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations or U.S. Department of Commerce rules.~4 Otherwise, it would be possible to inadvertently "export" 13''RSA'' refers to a highly secure public-key encryption scheme.
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From page 97... ...
or the general process of federal criminal procedure; the FBI might obtain a subpoena under United States Code Annotated, Title 18, Section 2703, he said. Plesser agreed that the university would have to comply with the ECPA, assuming that the university, for billing purposes, kept records of which materials were accessed and that law enforcement authorities requested that information.
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From page 98... ...
Thus, laws and regulations based on impeding the movement of physical objects across geographical boundaries are increasingly difficult to enforce in a networked environment. Previous copying technologies such as tape recorders and photocopiers have resulted in a legal regime based on the concept of fair use; much of the debate today revolves around the extent to which now-traditional concepts of fair use can be sustained in a networked environment.
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