The battle lines are being drawn between copyright and copyleft proponentsââ,¬"but what are they fighting about?
Behind the seemingly rational, if slow, changes to copyright law to accommodate new technologies, tensions are now beginning to run high. At issue is the copyright owners' right to control their works in the digital environment and the public's right to have access to them.
In the copyright corner are the big publishing and production companies that are increasingly using watermarking, encryption, and other forms of security like embedded zoning systems in DVDs to restrict access to digital works and prevent piracy. In the copyleft corner are creators who want people to have free access to their work and users who are concerned that technological security measures will seriously damage the free flow of ideas. They point out that new technologies are undermining copyright law's fair dealing provisions that have previously allowed access to copyright works for purposes such as research and study, criticism, and review.
The digital publishers and producers are rightly concerned about piracy. It is easy and cheap to distribute perfect and limitless copies of digital works, as Napster proved with its peer-to-peer file sharing software. The response of the digital publishers was to regard these mainly youthful Napster users as law breakers. They moved aggressively to close down Napster and to introduce even tougher technological controls on copyright works. They also pushed hard for laws, now introduced in both Australia and the US, making it an offence to bypass software that protects digital files.
In doing so they provided a target for the copyleft contingent to come out fighting. Some creators such as singer and songwriter Janice Ian have turned on the record industry refuting the claim that free access to her works via the Internet harms sales of her CDs. On the contrary, she claims that exposure is essential to an artist's success and that sales of her CDs actually increase when she makes new tracks available on the Internet (see her article written for Performing Songwriter magazine). The founders of the Baen Free library make similar claims and expect to make money from books sales generated after making works available on the Internet.
Others concerned abut the locking up of copyright materials are scientists objecting to the publishers of scientific journals -owning" scientific research and those determined to prevent biotechnology companies from -owning" the rights to particular human genes or expensive drug treatments. They include a group of high-profile intellectuals (including five Nobel prize winners) at the Brookings Institute in the US who argue that new copyright laws and copyright protection are now undermining cultural creativity and innovation rather than encouraging it. Another group at the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society advocates counter-copyrightââ,¬"encouraging copyright owners to add a [cc] icon to their work signalling that the content creators are willing to share it and have it built on by others.
It remains to be seen which side will prevail or whether copyright law will evolve to provide the sort of balance that existed between creators and users in the print world. Meanwhile, the first prosecution under the US Digital Millennium Act (DMCA), which bans bypassing copyright protection of digital files and outlaws the manufacture of anti-circumvention tools, is underway in California. A Russian computer scientist who gave a paper at a conference in the US last year was arrested by the FBI for breaching the DMCA. His employer, the Russian company ElcomSoft, now faces charges for selling over the Internet an anti-circumvention device that allows users to bypass copyright protection in Adobe's ebook software.
The copyright and copyleft factions are lining up for a battle that may also take place in Australia where similar provisions were recently introduced into the Australian Copyright Act.
Lynne Spender is Special Projects Manager of the Australian Interactive Multimedia Industry Association (AIMIA)ââ,¬"a professional association for creators and developers of digital content. AIMIA can be contacted on 02 8256 1713 or at director@aimia.com.au.
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