The Progress of Science and Useful Arts: Why Copyright Today Threatens Intellectual Freedom (FEPP)

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

9. US - The Progress of Science and Useful Arts: Why Copyright Today
Threatens Intellectual Freedom (FEPP)
Free Expression Policy Project, by Marjorie Heins. This 71-page
policy report demystifies such complex laws as the 1998 Sonny Bono
Copyright Term Extension Act and Digital Millennium Copyright Act,
and deconstructs the underlying conflicts over "fair use," parody,
copying, and the public domain.

http://www.qlinks.net/items/qlitem15017.htm

Executive Summary

Should teenagers be allowed to swap music over the Internet? Should computer
hackers be allowed to decrypt the entertainment industry's electronic locks
on e-books, songs, or movies? Should authors, artists, and their heirs have
complete and perpetual control over the sale, copying, and distribution of
their creations? 

Copyright law has become a rocky, treacherous field of free-expression
battles. It is at the core of today's controversies in the arts, culture,
and scholarship. New laws passed by Congress to aid the companies that make
up the "copyright industry" have intensified the debates. These laws have
badly upset the "difficult balance" between rewarding creativity through the
copyright system and society's competing interest in the free flow of ideas.

In 1998, for example, Congress passed the "Sonny Bono Copyright Term
Extension Act," which delayed the time when creative works will enter the
"public domain" to nearly a century for corporations and even longer for
many individuals and their heirs. The same year, the "Digital Millennium
Copyright Act" (DMCA) made it a crime to distribute technology that
circumvents electronic locks on books, films, articles, software, or songs
-- even though circumvention itself is not always illegal, and even though a
ban on technology strikes directly at scientific research.

Lawsuits contesting these new restrictions have had mixed results. A
constitutional challenge to the Sonny Bono law now awaits decision by the
Supreme Court. The government is prosecuting a Russian company under the
DMCA for creating a device to decrypt electronic books. Entertainment
companies, having shut down the Napster system for swapping music online,
are now trying to wipe out other file-sharing programs like Grokster and
KaZaA. Meanwhile, scholars, librarians, artists, computer scientists, and
many others are working toward a more open, free-speech-friendly copyright
system.

The tension between strong copyright control and free expression today
cannot be ignored. We hope this report will provide a useful resource in the
ongoing debate and help restore the "difficult balance" between copyright
control and free expression. 

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To unsubscribe or update your address, click
  http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/