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Congress Working Out Kinks in Online Copyright

Bill would bring U.S. law into compliance with terms of international treaties.

By Richard Mullins, PCWorld   

Most sparring over online copyright has been between the motion picture and music industries and other content creators, which seek tougher laws protecting creative works online, and online service and equipment providers, which seek to limit their liability for transmitting such works.

The debate culminated in a compromise measure passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. The resolution, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, would bring U.S. laws into synch with two treaties adopted in 1996 by the World Intellectual Property Organization. The Senate then could fully ratify the treaties.

Missouri Senator John Ashcroft, who negotiated many of the compromises in the bill, said, %dquotThis bill moves copyright law into the digital age and provides important protection for parents, Internet users, and makers of creative works.%dquot

The Senate committee approved the resolution only after some hard-fought compromises between factions. It now goes to the full Senate for a vote.

While the creative industries initially sought to outlaw software that could be used to circumvent security features that protect copyrights, opponents argued that there are legitimate uses of such tools--for example, to test networks for hacker-vulnerable flaws.

Fritz Attaway, senior vice president and Washington general counsel of the Motion Picture Association, said he wants Congress to prevent rogue outfits from using the Internet as a mass pirating venue.

%dquotWe look to the Internet as a new distribution outlet,%dquot Attaway said, adding that he hopes the Internet will become a venue for releasing full-length films when or before they reach the home-video stage. %dquotIn order to make that attractive, it has to be secure. And the only way you are going to see Titanic legitimately on the Internet is if it gets protected.%dquot

A compromise struck by Ashcroft intended to make that possible is the %dquotnotice and putback%dquot feature of the resolution. In one scenario envisioned by the deal, a musician would notify an Internet service provider that a Web page on its network offered pirated copies of a new album. The provider would have to remove or block the material, but if the musician hadn%squott pursued the issue with formal court proceedings within two weeks, the provider could %dquotput back%dquot the material.

Jonathan Band, a Washington partner with the San Francisco-based law firm of Morrison & Forester, said the two-week limit is needed because without the time limit, a movie director, for example, could force a provider to permanently block an unfavorable movie review by claiming it was a copyright infringement. Band said the %dquotnotice and put back%dquot provisions were %dquotvery important for First Amendment reasons%dquot to protect online users%squot opportunity to legitimately make their business publishing movie reviews.

In contrast, executives at ISPs are worried that those seeking to profit from a potential copyright infringement would extort the highly visible service providers first, rather than making the effort to track down whoever posted the infringing material on their network.

William Burrington, America Online%squots director of law and public policy, said the new laws %dquotwill give more clear rules for average users who are putting their own content online, and will put them on the same level playing field as major producers.%dquot

Burrington, who was in the U.S. delegation that negotiated the WIPO treaty in Geneva, said he wanted %dquotdoable%dquot rules for ISPs on how to deal with copyright complaints during their day-to-day operations.