Re: consortium to discuss electronic storage

Thanks to all for a very interesting discussion. Some of you may be interested in some comments which fall out of this discussion.

On Wed, 22 Sep 93 19:50:58 -0400, Glenn S. Tenney wrote:

>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.

We have just had published the draft report of the Copyright Law Review Committee which has reported, in a way similar to CONTU but by no means as voluminously, on the needs for amendment to the Australian Copyright Act in order to 'deal with' (I use the term carefully) computer related issues.

Here at the University of Melb, we have been running some seminars discussing the report. The overall theme, if we could identify just one, is the difficulty which the law has been having with the problem of representation. This finds its apogee, perhaps, in the kinds of multimedia  concerns which Glenn mentions. It is staggering to me that a policy making body (comprised of judges, lawyers, computer scientists and the like) have been able to ground their analysis on the basis of _existing_ copyright law and concerns, and have given little thought to what it is that we want to protect. Quite disturbing.

For those who are interested, I can send them copies of our conclusions, and may even be able to get a copy of the report (though I can't promise this). Let me know if you are keen.

Regards

Dan.

Dan Hunter                                              The Law School
                                           The University of Melbourne
                                           Parkville,  Victoria,  3052 
Phone: (+61 3) 344 4753                                      AUSTRALIA
Fax:   (+61 3) 347 2392          Email: dah[_at_]rumpole.law.unimelb.edu.au
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