FITUG e.V.
Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft
FITUG e.V.Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft |
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http://www.lawmoney.com/homepage/Display_Story/Previewstory.asp?StoryNum=4282
16 June 2000
Can technology tame the net?
The internet is throwing up all sorts of challenges to intellectual property owners. In an exclusive interview, James Nurton and Ralph Cunningham ask MCI WorldCom’s Vinton Cerf, one of the net’s founders, if technology can help solve the legal problems
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What challenges does the Internet present for IP owners?
The Internet presents both an opportunity and a challenge. We need to try to establish IP norms with compatible legislation. The present regime does not cater well to existing laws. There are lots of potential abuses - such as where one country chooses not to go along with the standard. For example the tax rules might be different in one country; it would then be attractive to go there and that would distort the marketplace.
I am regularly asked questions such as: can you do this technically, for example with trademarks and domain names? And, in constructing pieces of the Internet, there are export control questions. When you move content from one place to another, from a hosting centre, what are the intellectual property implications? How do you guide customers using trademarks? How do you deal with web hosting and caching (which causes trouble) and mirroring (which causes even more trouble)?
If you have a database filled with information, you probably have to be aware at least of the American and European privacy laws. There has to be a balance between personal privacy and convenience: individual choice is important in the US, while Europe is more top- down.
One of the problems is that the Internet is carrying so much intellectual property, it carries information which people don’t see as someone’s IP. The owner might forget, or not know that they have a copyright on it, or simply not know about the law. Take a piece of music which you can have in digital form, or as sheet music or in a performance, or in a combination of means. It is the same object but manifested in different ways. The same thing can morph itself into any of these things. The internet is doing this to other media - radio, TV, cable.
How can the IP and Internet communities cooperate?
It’s an educational process. There has to be a mutual education programme. For me, there is a need to educate the IP community on what we can and can’t do with the technology. For example, Jack Valenti of the Motion Picture Association has suggested that we need a system that rings a bell every time there is a copyright violation. But that simply can’t be done with the technology.
And we need to ask questions of the IP community about issues such as digital electronic copyright management: can I copy, redistribute, translate or perform something? For example, Bob Kahn has developed an IP digital copyright management system for the Library of Congress called the Handle system. It contains information that helps you find IP, and find out who owns it and so on.
We also have to help the IP community understand the limits of regulation. It is like the new photocopying machines of the past: we may have to realize that some things can’t be stopped. MP3 may be like this. It may be that the IP community says, with regard to MP3: I can’t stop that, so how do I change my business models to adapt?
There is so much competition on the Internet you don’t even have to pretend to regulate it. If you’re in the Federal Communications Commission in the US, for example, you must be very confused. You might ask: MCI WorldCom - what are they? Are they a telephone, cable or Internet company or are they doing all those things? How do you regulate them? Well, with the Internet, you don’t have to. The bottlenecks are the cables. What is needed is to regulate the means of delivery not the TV programme itself. You need to regulate the guy who owns the cable, and open it up to get competition.
What is the way forward?
There are two things to remember: the Internet has a libertarian component, so there are knee-jerk reactions from users to the IP community. You need to approach them with a rational point of view. The libertarian, rational point of view is that users’ rights are best served by IP protection. Some people will say you have to change the way the rules work, but you need to talk about it: what are the business implications? How do we encourage the creation of intellectual property?
For example, do we need to look again at fair use concepts? We may have to say that it is fine to download a CD on your computer, but if you make 10 million copies then we have a problem. Digital watermarks may help but that is only a start. There has to be more willingness to explore alternatives among all communities. Only then will new business models emerge.