Re: consortium to discuss electronic storage

At 10:49 AM 9/19/93 -0400, Trotter Hardy wrote:
> ...What is
>NEW about copyright and electronic information?

Nothing to some of us :-) Back around '76, I spoke with one of the CONTU lawyers and discussed a couple of points...

1. I'm not saying any side likes it, but I felt that there was a valid interpretation of the copyright law back then that software could be covered as a sound recording (if you read the law as it was, it's clear that the definition of a sound recording matched floppies, data tapes, and even ROMs), and the source code could be covered as is a musical score. A part of my point was (and is) that you can take most new technologies and force them to fit existing IP law -- not that it makes people happy.

    In the case of software and sound recording, for example... The downside would have been that (a) compulsory licensing, and (b) the royalty to be paid for that license. No software company would ever want that :-)

2. I also noted that all hell will break loose in a few years when music becomes all digital -- because any and all copies of a digital piece is an exact copy as good as the master.

And that is the simple answer to your question: Copyright law never imagined a time / technology where every copy would be as good as the original, and could be done virtually instantly and at virtually no cost.

---
Glenn Tenney
tenney[_at_]netcom.com            Amateur radio: AA6ER
Voice: (415) 574-3420        Fax: (415) 574-0546