[PEN-L:1926] Property Right Cops on the Internet --Bounty hunters next?

["Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Is anyone, anywhere undertaking the serious work of attacking
"intellectual property rights" --besides the pro-indigenous groups who
are trying to keep them from getting ripped off?

Harry


Date: Wed, 13 Dec 1995 10:42:16 -0500 (EST)
From: JB <brioneja@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Copyright Holders Patrol the Internet

fyi

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   Money and Investing Update
   Navigation to other Update sections Wednesday, December 13, 1995

Copyright Holders Patrol the Internet
With Vigilance, Looking for Violations

   By ROSS KERBER
   Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

   Matt Carlson's home page on the Internet used to feature pictures of
   Winnie-the-Pooh. But last June, after Dutton Children's Books said the
   images violated its copyright, the New Mexico State University student
   removed them. ''I didn't want to mess with Winnie's high-powered
   lawyers,'' he says.

   Copyright owners used to pay little heed to unauthorized on-line use
   of their material by nonprofit users like Mr. Carlson. While copyright
   holders have to defend protected material or risk losing their rights,
   nonprofit on-line use was considered too arcane. In addition, it isn't
   entirely clear that such use is illegal.

   But now, with the spread of the Internet -- and especially its World
   Wide Web segment, which includes audio and video -- copyright holders
   are going after fans and other noncommercial reproducers. Never, they
   say, has there been a threat quite like the Internet. It is a medium
   capable of making endless copies of any material -- songs, software,
   text, films -- at virtually no cost.

   ''To lose control over the material can be death,'' says Eileen Kent,
   Playboy Enterprises Inc.'s vice president for new media. Playboy
   complained to about a dozen universities after it found that students
   were posting its photos on the Internet using their university
   accounts.

   Tyco Toys Inc. sends a letter a week to stop home pages from
   displaying images that resemble its fortune-telling Magic 8 Ball toy.
   Paramount Pictures started several years ago trying to stop the many
   technically adept fans of ''Star Trek'' from spreading photos from the
   TV series and the movies. And Elvis Presley Enterprises Inc. recently
   ordered the removal of sound clips of ''Blue Suede Shoes'' and ''Hound
   Dog'' from a fan's home page, along with images she had scanned from
   Graceland postcards.

   ''We don't want carpetbaggers putting up the digital equivalent of
   Elvis on black velvet,'' says Mark Lee, a Los Angeles attorney for
   Presley Enterprises.

   Christopher M. Franceschelli, president of Dutton Children's Books,
   New York, says the company applies the same rights-protection
   standards to the Web that it uses in the print world. Dutton is also
   concerned about how characters like Pooh are depicted. Mr.
   Franceschelli says Dutton staffers have found Web pages showing A.A.
   Milne characters taking part in murder and suicide rituals.

   In the past, most on-line copyright suits have targeted for-profit
   enterprises that were peddling software programs or pornographic
   photos. But the law is murky when money or sex isn't involved.

   Last year, a federal prosecutor in Boston brought criminal fraud
   charges against a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
   who ran a bulletin board for users to copy and exchange copyrighted
   software. Because the student wasn't making money, his actions weren't
   criminal violations of copyright law, ruled U.S. District Judge
   Richard Stearns, who threw out the case in December 1994.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Copyright lawyers say that cases involving nonprofit entities are
   likely to be decided on such grounds as what portion of a work is
   copied, whether the use cuts into a copyright holder's sales and
   whether the copying should be protected as a ''fair use'' purpose such
   as parody, criticism, comment or review. ''You don't have the
   God-given right to put everything you feel like up on the Internet,''
   says Bruce Sunstein, a Boston intellectual-property lawyer. ''But
   there's still a lot of freedom in what you can do.''
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

   Worries about alienating their fans complicate matters for some
   entertainment companies that want to retain their copyrights. Sony
   Music Entertainment Inc. has sent notices to creators of Web pages
   honoring Pearl Jam, one of its bands. But the company says it may
   allow sites to use its images free by license, as long as they agree
   that they won't alter images.

   Besides unleashing lawyers, publishers are pushing Congress to pass
   copyright-law changes proposed by a Clinton administration working
   group. The group backed defining digital transmission as a form of
   publication and supported electronic coding of all copyrighted
   material that will notify publishers when their material is copied. It
   also favored criminal penalties for making copies with a retail value
   of $5,000 or more, which would probably include nonprofit postings on
   the Internet.

   The proposals worry civil libertarians and computer professionals. The
   Association for Computing Machinery, a trade group, says the rules are
   written so narrowly they could impede scientists from using the
   Internet to browse through research materials.

   Pamela Samuelson, a visiting professor at Cornell Law School, argues
   that they would virtually eliminate the ''fair use'' provisions of
   current copyright law. In the view of publishers, Prof. Samuelson
   complains, ''there is no piece of a copyrighted work small enough that
   they are uninterested in charging for its use, and no use private
   enough that they aren't willing to track it down and charge for it.''

   Publishers say the changes are needed because works in digital format
   are so easily copied that the potential for lost revenue is high. They
   also worry that it is difficult for users to judge the authenticity of
   material that, in digital form, can be easily reproduced and altered.

   For the past year, the publishers of a work by the philosopher Ludwig
   Wittgenstein have sought to stamp out a flawed translation that was
   originally posted on the Internet by professors at Oxford University.
   The professors removed the text as soon as they were asked, says
   Stewart Cauley, who was until recently the editor for electronic
   publishing at Routledge, a New York division of Thomson International.
   But Mr. Cauley says the same flawed text pops up every few months,
   reposted on other Web sites by scholars who aren't aware of its
   origin.

   ''We were most concerned with the flaws in the translation,'' he says.
   ''Then, once we started thinking about it, we also decided it might
   cut into sales.''


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............................................................................
Harry Cleaver
Department of Economics
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78712-1173  USA
Phone Numbers: (hm)  (512) 442-5036
               (off) (512) 475-8535   Fax:(512) 471-3510
E-mail: hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Home Page: http://www.eco.utexas.edu:80/Homepages/Faculty/Cleaver/index.html
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