What can "copyright" possibly mean when millions of people can download the information they find on the Internet? So far, the idea of open access to these materials hasn't slowed down the onslaught of new information flowing into the Net. But will information suppliers rebel against the status quo at some point? If they do clamp down, will the copyright laws be any help?
That depends on who you ask. Several widely divergent schools of thought have developed among the prognosticators of network copyright. Among them: No Copyright on Network Materials, Period. Adherents to this approach claim the Net is a shared public resource, and its riches should be freely available to all. But what about the "legal rule" that a copyrighted work is not available to all unless expressly placed in the public domain by the owner? Merely uploading a text onto the Net can't be a dedication to the public domain, unless we're ready to discourage authors of books and articles from placing their works on the Net. And what if copyrighted materials are placed on the Net without the owner's permission? Should the owner be able to sue for copyright infringement? Are copyrights somehow stripped off on the way into the Net, leaving the materials bare of legal protection?
It's Okay to Quote. There's an old myth in publishing that you can reproduce texts or statements as quotes without permission as long as you name the creator of the material. This is untrue; you need the author's permission, unless an exception like "fair use" applies (see below). Yet in the online world, thousands of people join in public discussions spanning the globe, and journalists are mining this rich new vein of material. Some excuse their re-publication without consent by pointing out they always attribute quoted materials to their authors. Will the look and feel of the Net - which some see as a collection of uncopyrightable discussions - somehow lead to a new "legal rule" that permits rampant appropriation of others' online writings under the guise of quoting?
Fair Use. Re-publishing works taken from the Net is often defended as fair use. Computer artists have been known to plunder digitized images they find on the Net without obtaining permissions. Similarly, some bulletin board operators publish CD-ROMs of BBS-resident shareware without the shareware owner's permission. Historically, fair use was a narrow exception to copyright law that applied to education and critical commentary. It has become an excuse for people who are lazy or simply too cheap to purchase a copyright license. Will fair use on the Net expand in the direction suggested by computer artists and BBS sysops, causing this exception to copyright protection to engulf the rule?
Retention of Tight Copyright Control. Many software manufacturers are concerned that their programs are distributed on the networks without their permission. Whenever they find an unauthorized upload, they circulate threatening letters through the online communities. Congress recently assisted the software industry in this effort by adding the threat of prison time to what was previously a purely commercial violation. It remains to be seen whether the industry's scare tactics will put a permanent dent in the Net's freewheeling treatment of software and other information.
Will any of these approaches to copyright prevail? Probably not. More likely, all of these approaches will find their own niches in the vast, amorphous community that is the Net.
