Meeting Takes Copyright Law to Digital Age

Billions of dollars and the commercial future of the Internet are on the line as Clinton administration officials, media and technology executives, and consumer advocates meet in Geneva today to discuss a stack of controversial proposals for overhauling copyright law.

In the first government-level meeting in decades of the World Intellectual Property Organization, participants hope to update international law for the digital age--a mission that nations large and small and a wide cross-section of industries agree is a worthy endeavor. Cyberspace is widely seen as the future distribution medium for books, movies, music and software, and effective copyright protection is essential to its development.

But that’s where the consensus ends. The U.N. body’s proposals, contained in three draft treaties and strongly supported by the administration, have already produced a rancorous debate in the United States, the world’s biggest exporter of intellectual property.

Supporters of the treaties say they are merely a common-sense extension of existing property rights, but opponents characterize them as a sweeping power grab by big media conglomerates.

A bill updating U.S. copyright laws, which contained many of the same provisions as the main proposed international treaty, stalled in Congress last year. But ratification of a treaty would boost its chances for success next time around, and the jockeying for position in Geneva will serve as a prelude to the coming domestic debate, participants say.

Entertainment and publishing companies backing the new measures want to extend copyright protection to new kinds of intellectual property and strengthen protections against piracy, which digital technology makes easier than ever.

But public advocates and some communications and computer companies say the draft treaty tramples the rights of information consumers. Giving copyright owners too much power, they argue, will impose unacceptable policing requirements on Internet service providers and stifle the growth of the Internet as a democratic communications medium.

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In Geneva, developing nations that have little interest in the rights of foreign copyright holders will also join the battle as negotiators from about 60 countries hash out what would be the first update to the Berne Convention in 25 years. Initially drafted in 1886, the Berne Convention establishes international rules for the protection of a wide array of creative works.

The legal issues confronting the WIPO convention, which begins today and continues for three weeks, are arcane. But the stakes are high.

“The export earnings of American creative industries is the second-biggest contributor to the U.S. balance of trade,” said Bruce A. Lehman, chairman of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. “Our future rests very much on what copyright rules look like in a global-networked society, and right now, there are no rules.”

On the table in Geneva are contentious issues including the creation of a new copyright for database material, the liability of online service providers for copyright infringement on their networks, digital rights for audiovisual performers and the legality of devices that allow users to pick electronic locks on copyrighted works.

The most contested treaty provisions center on the concept of “fair use.” Under U.S. law, fair-use exemptions make it legal to use copyrighted material for some educational, scientific and noncommercial purposes.

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Critics of the draft WIPO treaty say the absence of an explicit and reasonably broad fair-use clause would make the simple act of e-mailing a few paragraphs of a copyrighted article to a friend illegal.

Furthermore, the critics say, the proposed treaty could even be interpreted to criminalize World Wide Web browsing, because computers make a temporary copy of material each time it is transmitted over the Internet. Producers of online programming could also charge for each copy of the material that is made as it crosses the Net, turning it into a “pay-per-view” network rather than the freewheeling communications system it is today.

“We are concerned that fair-use exemptions not remain stuck in the 20th century while rights of owners get updated for the 21st,” said Adam Eisgrow of the American Library Assn., which opposes the proposed treaty. “Schools and libraries won’t be able to use computers to their full potential for the public unless these treaties are properly balanced.”

“It’s a land grab by the content owners to get more rights,” said Peter Choy, deputy counsel for Sun Microsystems and chairman of the American Committee for Interoperable Systems, a group of 40 U.S. technology and telecommunications firms--including America Online, Advanced Micro Devices and 3Com Corp.--that also opposes the draft measure.

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The media firms pushing for approval insist that all these issues are phony. They say current fair-use exemptions would remain in force. And they scoff at the idea that an individual would be held criminally liable for merely browsing the Web--even though, technically, they could be.

“No one has been prosecuted for that, and no one is about to be prosecuted for that,” said Steven Metalitz, general counsel for the International Intellectual Property Alliance, a lobbying group that includes major film, music and book publishing trade associations. “The problem is, unless you outlaw it, you may not have the legal tools to go after the bad guys.

“This is important to copyright owners because it will help to raise the minimum standards and make it easier for them to protect their property in what is an inherently global marketplace. That’s all.”

The database provision, contained in a separate treaty proposal, would create a new property right for facts contained in compilations such as databases of court decisions or professional sports statistics. It has become the focus of attack in recent weeks from scientists and consumer advocates who termed it “the end of the public domain.”

The aim of the database treaty is to protect the investment of firms that collect and arrange information. Computer technology makes it a no-brainer to sort through large databases and use portions of the information, or even to copy a database in its entirety and rearrange it--thus skirting copyright laws.

But some argue that the treaty proposal gives far too much control over facts to those who simply collect them.

James Love of the Consumer Project on Technology says, for example, that it would prevent anyone from publishing Cal Ripken’s career batting average without the express permission of Major League Baseball.

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Scientists are concerned about preserving their ability to collect data for research without paying royalties.

“Databases are integral to scientific research, and with the growing use of the Internet as a major vehicle for providing access to scientists around the world, they are finding new and exciting applications in research ranging from the Human Genome Project to global climate studies,” Richard Nicholson, executive officer of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, wrote in a letter to Vice President Al Gore.

“We are deeply concerned that the treaty may not only conflict with these trends and applications but may infringe on the full and free flow of information so vital to their success.”

Lehman acknowledges that the database treaty probably will not be ratified in Geneva this time. But Congress may well debate a version of it next year, along with the other copyright issues to be discussed in Geneva over the coming weeks, and Lehman says he is optimistic that they will be adopted in the long run.

“There are a lot of people who just don’t want to pay creators for the work that they create,” he said. “There’s a lot of people who think it’s OK, online, just to rip somebody off. That’s not the view of this administration.”