The Net has introduced a piracy nightmare for the motion picture, recording, and publishing industries, which have resorted to lawsuits to protect their intellectual property online. Now they have another group of digital duplicators to worry about: teachers.
According to a report published this week by the US Copyright Office, public schools and universities need exemptions and flexible fair-use policies for the copyrighted materials they use in digital long-distance teaching.
The exemptions, which have been in place for traditional classrooms since 1976, grant teachers the liberty to show film clips, photographs, text, and other copyrighted materials without the explicit permission of their owners.
The advent of computer-networked education has changed the game considerably.
Although the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was a start, Congress had hesititated to change the educational exemptions until technology for protecting intellectual property was more established. It did, however, commission a report after the law was passed in October.
Marybeth Peters, head of the US Copyright Office, presented the office's findings to Congress this week in a report recommending that key areas of existing copyright laws be amended for digital distance-learning projects.
"When the current law was enacted, the members of Congress made a policy decision with respect to certain educational uses," said Peters. "We conclude that [law] is now obsolete, and to maintain that policy balance you would have to update the law ... and expand the rights to include reproduction of works across networks."
It's hard to come up with effective legislation when the market for both distance-learning and copyright-protection products is so young, said Peters.
"In the 12 months we've been looking at this, technology in universities has been improving, growing, and changing and is in transition ... so to say, 'OK, now we're going to change the law' is a little difficult when you don't know where the market is going.'"
The copyright office has contacted copyright owners, nonprofit educational institutions, and nonprofit libraries to determine what key issues are involved in updating the legislation.
Educators are pushing for laws to take full advantage of computer networks, which will enhance their distance-learning programs, but copyright groups are lobbying to keep the existing legislation intact until the market evolves further, and acceptable copyright protection technologies are in place.
While the motion picture, recording, and publishing industries are resisting any changes to the copyright laws, authors who produce instructional materials are leaning the other way.
"For them, this issue is different than for the motion picture companies, where schools are not a primary market and there is no real economic incentive for licensing. They are concerned about downstream copying," said Peters.
The House of Representatives is considering legislation to update the educational applications for copyright law, and a hearing on intellectual property in the Senate is scheduled for 17 June.
