An opposing view from Rep. Goodlatte also appears at the URL below. My article on this unprecedented criminal copyright bill is: http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1588,00.html -Declan ====== http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/nceditf.htm USA Today Editorial 12/01/97- Updated 11:14 PM ET Law limits use of Net In 1994, Massachusetts Institute of Technology student David LaMacchia invited on-line users to download $1 million worth of copyrighted computer software that he'd put on the Internet. In spite of his antics, charges against LaMacchia were dismissed. Thanks to a legal loophole, hackers who break copyrights just for fun can't be criminally prosecuted. LaMacchia's case is just the most notorious example of how the growth of the Internet has strained the nation's copyright laws. Duplicating materials in cyberspace is as easy as clicking a mouse. The market for pirated goods is as infinite as the World Wide Web. And under copyright laws from the 1800s, infringement occurs only if a person makes money from the illegal act. Determined to deter the hackers, Congress passed a bill last month making it a felony to duplicate copyrighted materials on line, including computer software, recordings, books and articles. But the bill awaiting President Clinton's signature puts more than hackers at risk. It threatens the actions of scientists, academics and Web users, exposing them to criminal penalties of up to six years in jail. Researchers frequently use the Internet to distribute articles that they write but that other publications copyright. And the Internet now plays an important role in peer review. Scientists post their published research on a Web site in hope of encouraging the exchange of scientific information. Until now, copyright infringement wasn't a worry for these folks. Courts recognized the "fair use" of copyrighted works for noncommercial purposes, including teaching, research and criticism. To bar the use of all copyrighted material would be like telling film critics they couldn't quote dialogue in their movie reviews. Yet under its new law, Congress makes it a crime to duplicate copyrighted materials on line but neglects to include specific "fair use" legal protections allowing the duplication of copyrighted materials that doesn't hurt a work's commercial value. Lawmakers argue that protections aren't needed because the bill calls for the prosecution only of those who "willfully" violate copyrights. Their argument overlooks all the people who know they're using copyrighted material but do so without criminal intent: the researchers, students, writers and Web surfers who duplicate copyrighted materials as a way to communicate. Unless a clear exemption is written into law, all risk becoming targets for overly aggressive prosecutors. There are compelling reasons to revise copyright laws for our digital age. But without guaranteeing researchers the same protections on line as they have off, Congress risks limiting the Internet's legitimate uses. ###