The New York Times, December 16, 1996, pp. D1, D6. Global Debate Over Treaties On Copyright By Denise Caruso Will new copyright laws destroy the global village in order to save it? Delegates to the World Intellectual Property Organization of the United Nations who last gathered long before the Internet or even the personal computer reached global prominence, are now convened in Geneva to decide whether to ratify three controversial changes to international copyright treaties. Intended to crack down on the flow of unauthorized information over data networks, two of the treaties -- dealing with literary and artistic works, and with music recordings -- were proposed by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The third, which sought to establish a new protection for electronic data bases was originally proposed by the European Union, it met such strong opposition that it was effectively tabled at the end of last week. Representing the United States at the meeting, the Patent and Trademark Office says its proposals are necessary to protect the financial assets of information providers in the age of the Internet -- an era in which a single keystroke can broadcast information around the world without respect to its copyright status. But legions of opponents -- including the Library of Congress (which administers copyrights), Dun & Bradstreet, the National Education Association and the Association for Computing -- do not agree with the Patent Office. They worry that the new treaties, if adopted, would not be in the spirit of American copyright law, which was intended to balance profit against society's need for information to advance progress in science, education and the arts. (More details on dissenters can be found at www.public-domain.org and www.ari.net/dfc/.) What is more, other critics fear that the rule changes would make network service providers responsible for the legal status of every electronic communication that passes through their systems. The American proposals are not new. The Patent Office tried last year to win Congressional approval for a set of similar changes to domestic copyright law, under failed legislation called the National Information Infrastructure Copyright Protection Act of 1995. But instead of retreating from that failure, the Patent Office instead decided to take the matter to Geneva. "If this issue is placed in an international context, it certainly should be more persuasive" to Congress, the Commissioner of Patents, Bruce Lehman, explained in a July interview with The New York Times. This unprecedented move, as well as the proposals themselves, have stirred controversy on both sides of the Atlantic. For one, if the treaties are ratified in Geneva, there will be no further possibility of changing them until the organization convenes again, which is usually once every decade or so. The only choice left to American lawmakers -- who already rejected the original bill -- would be a "yea or nay" vote on the treaties. As for the proposals themselves, critics say they define copyright violation far too broadly. Under strict interpretation, simply calling up a digitized image or article on a computer screen -- the very act that defines browsing the Internet -- would constitute creating a "copy," even if the information existed only as electrons in a computer's memory, or was stored in a temporary bin on a viewer's hard disk. "On the Internet, then, everyone becomes an infringer," said Mark Radcliffe, a copyright attorney and co-author of "The Multimedia Law & Business Handbook." The question of who would be responsible for policing this new generation of infringers is so troublesome to some American executives that last Tuesday; chief executives from 11 leading Internet, on-line and communications companies sent President Clinton a letter protesting the proposed treaty. They told Mr. Clinton they were deeply concerned that the new treaty would make them responsible for the contents of every electronic communication that passed through their systems. That responsibility, they argued, would force them to monitor all network activity by their customers -- every piece of E-mail, every viewing of a Web site, every commercial transaction. The result, the letter said, would be sharply increased costs for Internet and on-line services, less privacy for users and "reduced connectivity among 'information have-nots' in our society and throughout the world." In other words, so much for the global village. Given the overwhelming domestic objections to most of the treaty proposals, the obvious questions are: Who does support them? And why is the United States pushing so hard for them in Geneva? In fact, the main beneficiaries of the new copyright rules are the highest-stake copyright holders: rich, politically powerful entertainment and media conglomerates, which fear that pirated material will destroy the lucrative international market for products that can be digitally copied and distributed globally. According to many intellectual property experts who have tracked digital copyright issues over the years, these companies have kept a low public profile, influencing the political process through lobbyists and industry organizations. But for those concerned about the privacy implications of these proposals, the Administration's push to get them adopted is troubling, especially when viewed alongside other pieces of digital network legislation, like the Communications Decency Act, an Internet censorship law. Enforcing a proposed global copyright protection treaty would almost certainly require some sophisticated form of user monitoring, here and abroad. Critics of the proposed copyright restrictions ask: Why not put the burden of protecting digital material on the entertainment companies who profit from it? Many other forms of intellectual property, including movies transmitted over cable television networks, are already protected by various technological means. In the digital world, computer software companies are already effectively using various data encryption technologies to protect their products for distribution over the network. And if progress to date is any indication, these technologies will become even more sophisticated and effective over time. But if the Internet is instead governed by overly broad copyright laws and enforcement techniques, the network may end up being a safer place for "The Lion King" than for the people who use it. [End]